Marguerite Duras

Marguerite Duras (pseudonym of Marguerite Donnadieu) was born in 1914 in Gia-Dinh, near Saigon. Her parents, both educators, had left France to settle in Indochina, then a French colony. Her father died very young, leaving her mother with three children, who accepted work in small villages in the tropical hinterlands to raise them. A land investment in Cambodia also proved useless for the family, as it was uncultivable. Duras would later describe these childhood and teenage years in "Un barrage contre le Pacifique" and "L'Amant." Marguerite completed her studies at a French high school, in a boarding school in Saigon, and moved to France, where she settled in Paris and began university studies in law, mathematics, and political science. Her first novel, "Les Impudents," was published in 1943. Since then, she used the pseudonym Duras, believing that "a writer cannot write under their father's name." She married Robert Antelme in 1939, and in 1942 she met Dyonis Mascolo, with whom she had a son, Jean. In 1950, she wrote "Un barrage contre le Pacifique" and frequented Parisian literary circles. From then on, writing never left her. Her works "Le Marin de Gibraltar" (1952), "Les Petits Chevaux de Tarquinia" (1953), "Des journées entières dans les arbres" (1954), and "Le Square" (1955) were published. However, she established herself as one of the most important figures in contemporary French literature with "Moderato Cantabile" (1958), the screenplay for the film directed by Alain Resnais in 1959, "Hiroshima, mon amour," and "Dix heures et demie du soir en été" (1960). With "Le Ravissement de Lol. V. Stein" (1964), a novel cycle began that haunts the character of the heroine Anne-Marie Stainer, finding its best expression in "Vice-Consul" (1965) and "India Song" (1974), narratives that she herself would turn into films. This was followed by: "L'Amante anglaise" (1967), "Agatha" (1981), "L'Amant" (1984), which was awarded the Prix Goncourt and became her greatest publishing success (also adapted into a film by Jean-Jacques Annaud), "L'Amant de la Chine du Nord" (1992), and "Yann Andrea Steiner" (1992), where she fictionalized her life partner since 1980. Marguerite Duras passed away in 1996 at the age of 81. Besides her prose work, she left behind plays such as "Les Viaducs de Seine-et-Oise" (1960), "Le Square" (1962), "Les Eaux et Forêts," "La Musica" (1965), "Savannah Bay" (1982), film scripts (including the now-famous "Hiroshima, mon amour," which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay), and was involved in film production. In 1984, she wrote the autobiographical novel "The Lover," which won the Prix Goncourt. She died in Paris at the age of 82.