Marguerite Duras Biography

French Novelist, Screenwriter, Filmmaker and Playwright

Jun 21, 2009 Tel Asiado

Brief biography of Marguerite Duras, regarded as France's most famous woman author of the late 20th century.

French writer Marguerite Duras wrote more than numerous novels, screenplays and plays. She is best-known for her prize-winning novel, The Lover, and her experimental works that place great emphasis on innovations regarding style. Her theme mainly explores the challenges of love in a world that affects it.

Early Life of Marguerite Duras

Duras was born Marguerite Donnadieu on April 4, 1914 in Giadinh, French Indochina, now Vietnam. Her father died when she was four, and her mother, a teacher, struggled to bring up three children.

Growing up aware of the degradation of the masses, her upbringing provided much material for her writing. She went to study in Paris at the age of 17, later married, and had a son in 1942.

Duras joined the Communist Party during World War II and fought with the French Resistance against the Nazi German occupation of France from 1944 to 1955, until her expulsion from its ranks. She also began writing under the name of Duras, taken from the name of a village in France near where her father had owned a property.

Duras the Writer

When she was 29-years-old, she published her first novel, The Impudent Ones. It was written in a style that was influenced by Ernest Hemingway. Her first real success was The Sea Wall, published when she was 36. This autobiographical novel is about a poor French family in Indochina.

It was her growing talent for dialogue that led her to write the screen scenario collaborating with Alain Renais's famous film Hiroshima, Mon Amour – about the brief love affair between a French actress and a Japanese businessman. She was 45.

Theme of Love in Duras' Writing

The theme of love between people of different races runs through many of her works, including her prize-winning novel The Lover, a story of a 15-year-old European girl and her affair with a Chinese lover. It won her the Prix Goncourt. It was made into a film in 1992, making her in the top international bestseller list.

Later, her treatment of love became more stylized. For instance, in The Square, a dialogue between a young woman and a traveling salesman who meet one another by chance, their immediate ease with one another not only allows them to share their lives in a probing way, but they also find in each other some hope.

Marguerite Duras won a number of awards for her experimental novels. She died at the age of 81, March 3, 1996.

Key Works by Marguerite Duras

• The Impudent Ones, 1943
• The Quiet Life, 1944
• The Sea Wall, 1950
• The Sailor from Gibraltar, 1952
• The Little Horses of Tarquinia, 1953
• The Square, 1955
• Moderato Cantabile, 1958
• Hiroshima, Mon Amour, 1959
• The English Lover, 1967
• Destroy, She Said, 1969
• Love, 1972
• India Song, 1974
• The Lover, 1984
• Pain, 1985
• The North China Lover, 1992
• That's All, 1995

Sources:

• Goring, Rosemary, Ed. Larousse Dictionary of Writers. New York: Larousse, 1994.
• McGovern, Una, Ed. Chambers Biographical Dictionary. Edinburgh: Chambers / Harrap Publishers, 2002.
• Payne, Tom. The A-Z of Great Writers. London: Carlton, 1997.

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Marguerite Duras, French Novelist and Playwright