The Loveris a forbidden story of a 15-year-old French girl and a 27-year-old Chinese-Vietnamese businessman whose relationship is doomed from the start because of racial and cultural differences in French colonial Vietnam. It's particularly salacious because it's an autobiographical novel that chronicles Marguerite Duras's real-life affair. Their physical and emotional acts of intimacy against their forbidden backdrop make their relationship even more tantalizing. As one Amazon reviewer puts it: "It's a mind-numbing journey of passionate embrace of somewhat love, and lust."