Booth Shares Title

French writer, playwright, screenwriter and fi lm director, Marguerite Duras (1914-1996) marked a turning point in French literature, namely with her novels Un Barrage contre le Pacifi que and Moderato Cantabile. Awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1984, her work L’Amant brought her to the attention of the general public. This woman, who loved surrounding herself with fetish objects, loyal friends and actors, constantly rediscovered or reinvented landscapes, places and doubles – all adopted and desired by her –, creating a distinctly Durassian universe. Gathered here in this richly illustrated volume, recollections, reproductions of manuscripts and letters, chosen and selected from the different chapters of her life, reveal a complex and endearing Duras: a warrior, something of a witch, capable of both affection and passion, a committed comrade often radical in her stances and ever on the look-out, subject to weaknesses but still a mistress of her choices… Readers are offered a view of the multiple facets of an extraordinary woman who stood up for normalcy, a free woman who advocated the physical beauty of life, a woman of paradoxes who witnessed the History of a century.