Duras, Marguerite (1914-1996)

French writer, dramatist, and film-maker. Her work includes short stories (‘Des Journées entières dans les arbres’ 1954, stage adaptation Days in the Trees 1965), plays (La Musica/The Music 1967), and film scripts (Hiroshima, mon amour 1960, India Song 1975). She also directed stage productions and film versions of her work. Her novels include Le Vice-consul/The Vice-Consul (1966), evoking an existentialist world from the setting of Calcutta (now Kolkata); L'Amant/The Lover (1984; Prix Goncourt), which deals with a love affair between a young French woman and a Chinese man; and Emily L. (1989). La Vie matérielle (1987) appeared in England as Practicalities (1990). Her autobiographical novel, La Douleur (1986), is set in Paris in 1945.

Life Duras was born in Giadinh, near Saigon, in French Indo-China (now Vietnam), and was educated in the Far East until the age of 18, when she returned to France. She graduated in law from the Sorbonne in 1935 and became a civil servant in the French Colonial Office. During World War II she was active in the Resistance. In 1949 she was expelled from the Communist Party, and it was then that she evolved her vision of individualism and personal freedom.

Work Other novels include Un Barrage contre le Pacifique/The Sea Wall (1950), Le Square/The Square (1955), Dix heures et demi du soir en été/Half Past Ten on a Summer's Evening (1960), Le Ravissement de Lol Stein/The Ravishing of Lol Stein (1964), Détruire dit-elle/Destroy, She Said (1969), and the anticommunist, antipolitical Abahn, Sabana, David (1971). In 1971 Duras abandoned the novel for cinema, but returned successfully to writing in the 1980s. Her late works include La Pluie d'été/Summer Rain (1990) and a rewriting of L'Amant as L'Amant de la Chine du nord/The Lover from Northern China (1992). She drew her subject matter from contemporary political issues, including France's policy towards Algeria and the student revolution of 1968, feminism (she was involved in the pro-abortion campaign), and the human psyche.