French novelist, representative of nouveau roman, playwright, and film director, internationally known for her screenplays of HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR, directed by Alain Resnais in 1959, and INDIA SONG (play 1973, screenplay 1975). After fairy traditional novels and stories Duras published in 1958 the novel MODERATO CANTABILE, which first summarized her themes of sexual desire, love, death and memory.

"L'enfant descendit lentement tout à coup.
   -Je voudrais plus apprende le piano.
   -Les grammes, dit Anne Desbaresdes, je ne les ai jamais sues, comment faire autrement?"
(from Moderato cantabile)

Marguerite Duras was born in Gia Dinh, Indochina (now Vietnam). Her father died when she was four, and her mother, a teacher, struggled hard to bring up three children. She spent most of his childhood in Indochina, but at the age of 17 she moved to France, where she studied law at the Sorbonne. Duras took her penname from the name of a village in France near where her father had owned property.

From 1935 to 1941 Duras worked at the ministry of colonies. During World War II she was a member of French Resistance; she had also joined the Communist Party, but she later condemned its policies. Her husband Robert Antelme was a member of the resistance group Richelieu, led by François Mitterand. He was captured by the Gestapo, but he survived Buchenwald, Gandersheim, and Dachau, and wrote his memoirs L'escepe humaine, when he returned to France, having been on the brink of death. Antelme was nursed by Duras, who had already planned to leave him, but waited for his recovery to marry the man who would be the father of his child. This period was basis for Duras's later collection of short stories, entitled LA DOULEUR (1985), a literary cry about the pressure under which she lived.

Duras published her first book, LES IMPUDENTS, in 1942. It was written in a style that was influenced by Ernest Hemingway. After the war Duras worked as a journalist for the magazine Observateur. Her reputation was made in the 1950s with such works as UN BARRAGE CONTRE LE PASIFIQUE (1950), which depicted a poor French family in Indochina, the psychological romance novel LE MARIN DEGIBRALTAR (1952), and LE SQUARE (1955), which associated her with the New Novel group. But Duras was not so much interested in abstract literary theories than examining the power of words, remembering, forgetting, and feelings of alienation. The theme of love between people of different races runs through many of Duras's works, among them Hiroshima, Mon Amour, which tells of the brief love affair between a French actress and a Japanese businessman.

After the May 1968 students' revolt Duras's writing grew increasingly abstract. She voluntarily rejected all the aesthetic and stylistic techniques familiar from her earlier work. Duras's sparse, yet suggestive style, and her use of language was much discussed by feminists as embodying feminine writing.

"When a woman drinks it's as if an animal were drinking, or a child. Alcoholism is scandalous in woman, and a female alcoholic is rare, a serious matter. It's a slur on the divine in our nature. I realised the scandal I was causing around me. But in my day, in order to have the strength to confront it publicly - for example, to go into a bar on one's own at night - you needed to have had something to drink already."
(from Practicalities, 1990)

From the 1970s Duras concentrated on making films and publishing screenplays. With Gérald Depardieu she made the film Camion in 1977. In the 1980s she wrote her Goncourt-winning autobiography L'AMANT (1984), about her youth in Indo-China. The story was made into a film. Duras's struggle with her alcoholism was subject for Yann Andréa Steiner's book M.D., her 45 years younger homosexual friend, whom Duras had met in 1982. She lived with Steiner until her death on November 3, 1996.

"...De ce dialogue harassant, il se dégage bien quelques petites choses; le désarroi de cette femme, la tristesse de sa vie, un vague désir de communiquer, par-delà les mots, avec quelqu'un - et pourquoi pas, après tout, avec ce Chauvin qui s'est trouvé là? Mais pourquoi ces saouleries au vin rouge? Ce brusque désir de rompre avec la vie normale? Il y a une sorte d'outrance qui fait que le lecteur ne peut, derrière ce comportement qu'on nous dit, imaginer qu'un monde superficiel dans lequel vit un être superficiel. Cette coquille de noix que Marguerite Duras nous offre ne ressemble en rien à celle dont parlait Joyce lorsqu'il disait vouloir mettre all space in a nutshell, car elle est, au départ, aussi faussement bariolée qu'un ouf de Pâques."
(Anne Villelaur about Moderato Cantabile in Les Lettres françaises, 6-3-1958)

For further reading: The Other Woman: Feminism and Feminity in the Works of Marguerite Duras by Trista Selous (1988); Women and Discourse in the Fiction of Marguerite Duras by S.D. Cohen (1993); Duras: A Biography by A. Vircondelet (1994); Marguerite Duras by Laure Adler (Gallimard, 1998) - Note: Although Duras helped writers opposing Nazis during World War II, among others Robert Antelme, who was imprisoned in Dachau, she has been accused of being member of literary committee controlled by the Germans. - Nouveau roman, see also Claude Simon, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Michel Butor, and Nathalie Sarraute.

• LES IMPUDENTS, 1942
• LA VIE TRANQUILLE, 1944
• UN BARRAGE CONTRE LE PASIFIQUE, 1950 - The Sea Wall
• LE MARIN DE GIBRALTAR, 1952 - The Sailor from Gibraltar - film 1966, dir. by Tony Richardson; script by Christopher Isherwood, Don Magner, Tony Richardson
• LES PETITS CHEVAUX DE TARQUINIA, 1953 - Little Horses of Tarquinia
• DES JOURNÉES ENTIÈRES DANS LES ARBRES, 1954 (stage adaptation: Days in the Trees)
• LE SQUARE, 1955 - The Square
• MODERATO CANTABILE, 1958. - film 1960, dir. by Peter Brook
• HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR, 1959 - film script, dir. by Alain Resnais
• LES VIADUCS DE LA SEINE-ET-OISE, 1960 (stage adaptation: The Viaducts)
• DIX HEURES ET DEMIE DU SOIR EN ÉTÉ, 1960 - Ten-Thirty on a Summer Night
• UNE AUSSI LONGUE ABSENCE, 1961
• L'APRES-MIDI DE MONSIEUR ANDESMAS, 1962 - The Afternoon of Monsieur Andesmas
• LE RAVISSEMENT DE LOL V. STEIN, 1964 - The Ravishing of Lol Stein -
• Four Novels, 1965
• LE VICE-CONSUL, 1966 - The Vice-Consul
• Three Plays, 1967
• L'AMANTE ANGLAISE, 1968
• DÉTRUIRE, DIT-ELLE, 1969 - Destroy, She Said
• ABAHN SABANA DAVID, 1970
• L'AMOUR, 1971
• INDIA SONG, 1973 (play, screenplay in 1975)
• NATHALIE GRANGER, SUIVI LA FEMME DU GANGE, 1973
• LES PARLEUSES, 1974
• Three Plays, 1975
• L'ÉDEN CINEMA, 1977
• LE CAMION, 1977
• LE NAVIRE NIGHT, 1978
• L'AMANT, 1984 - The Lover - film 1992, dir. by Jean-Jacques Annaud
• LA DOULEUR, 1985
• LES YEUX BLEUS CHEVEUX NOIRS, 1986
• EMILY L., 1987.
• LA PLUIE D`ÉTÉ, 1990 - Summer Rain
• L'AMANT DE LA CHINE DU NORD, 1990
• C'EST TOUT, 1995