Sondre Lerche on Marguerite Duras, and the alchemy of love

Send us Fan MailNorwegian pop star Sondre Lerche has been making music and releasing albums since he was a teenager, songs that ache with yearning and that are underpinned by swooning strings,  bossa nova rhythms, and jazz stylings. It was always clear that Lerche was a romantic, but a romantic with a sometimes aching, melancholy heart. If you needed evidence of that, look no further than the two books he’s chosen for this episode of shelf life - Marguerite Duras’s The Lover, and Geir Gulliksen’s The Story of a Marriage. Though very different, both novels are interested in the power dynamics of relationships, and the alchemy of love.