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Titre: Le Vice-Consul

Auteur: Marguerite Duras

Narrateur: Michael Lonsdale

Format: Unabridged

Durée: 4 hrs and 16 mins

Langue: Français

Date de publication: 06-02-15

Éditeur: Gallimard

Evaluation: 4.5 sur 5 sur 3 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Résumé de l'éditeur:

Qui est le vice-consul de Lahore ? Pourquoi a-t-il tiré de son balcon dans la direction des jardins de Shalimar où se réfugient les lépreux et les chiens ? Quel étrange attrait exerce sur lui Anne-Marie Stretter, ambassadrice à Calcutta ? Quelle est l'histoire de cette mendiante folle qui berce la rue de ses chants ? Un roman de l'extrême misère : celle de l'Inde, mais aussi et surtout celle du cœur.

©1966 Éditions Gallimard (P)2007 Éditions Gallimard

Avis des membres:

Exotic images of Indochina and India

Mme Duras has been a very prolific writer, although I understand the same characters appear repeatedly in her novels. I loved the beautiful and vivid descriptions of places like the southern coast of India. The description of the Indochinese countries that the secondary character, a beggar woman originally from, I believe, Cambodia, are fascinating. I don't know where else one could read such detailed, first-hand descriptions of this world. The personalities of the novel's characters are well communicated through their dialogue. But I didn't empathize with the main (to me) loser characters who are so miserable they're reduced to screaming in the night. I didn't find the story edifying or insightful. It's never even too clear just exactly what their problems are.

Un roman orientaliste par excellence

Edward Said wrote "Orientalism", in which he criticized the West and Western scholars, novelists, and artists for creating images and discourses about the "East" (in his case mostly the Middle East) which then allowed the West to feel that they knew the peoples and cultures of much of the world, and further, that this supposedly-accurate knowledge allowed them to control that part of the world. The lethargic, inchoate, unknowable East had to be ruled by people with get-up-and-go, who else but Westerners ? The West explained the "others" to themselves and came to dominate even Eastern thought about the East itself. The history of the post-colonial era has been one of gradual "de-orientalizing". As an anthropologist who has worked in India and lived in many Asian countries, I found Duras' novel extremely offensive in a way, though I admit her style of writing is intriguing. She "controls" the East, shaping it---as if that were her right---in the way she wants, to produce a certain effect. She plays with geography, she plays with politics and history, paying no attention to any aspect of reality. She presumes to be able to enter into the thoughts of a poor Cambodian girl kicked out of her village home for being unmarried and pregnant. While novels dealing with Westerners in other locales are often very interesting, it is generally a poor gambit for Westerners to try to view the world through the eyes of non-Westerners. I strongly feel that Duras' attempt here borders on the insulting. As for the other characters, their emotions, words, and actions are extremely vague, nothing much happens, the reader penetrates very little into minds or motives. Atmosphere is everything.

Unless you are a lover of such atmosphere unconnected to any real sort of place, you are going to find this book either tedious or annoying. I found it to be both.