Product Description
Marguerite Duras is France's best-known and most controversial contemporary woman writer. Duras' influence extends from her early novels of the 1950's to her radically innovative experimental autobiographical text of the 1980's The Lover
Leslie Hill's book throws new light on Duras' relationship to feminism, psychoanalysis, sexuality, literature, film, politics, and the media. Feted by Kristeva, and Laca who claimed her as almost his other self, Duras is revealed to be a profoundly transgressive thinker and artist. It will be a must for all concerned with contemporary writing, writing by women, recent European cinema, film and literature. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Good Quality
The book arrived promptly, and was in great condition. It was inexpensive, and I saved $20 by buying it here, rather than from my college.

I haven't read it yet, but I'm sure it'll be lovely.

L'Amant - original french version of the Lover by Duras
The novel, L'Amant, by Marguerite Duras written in the 50's was translated into English. The Lover, and became the basis for the movie The Lover starring Tony Leung.A great movie which stimulated me to read the book in English which then stimulated me to read the original.The English version is a literal translation of the French and possesses the flow and passion of the original.The movie is one of the best renditions of a book I have seen.In Netflix, the movie gets mixed reviews ranging from brilliant to those who get emotionally upset by the theme of the movie, which is an older (32 year old) Chinese man who has an affair with a very mature 15 year old French girl in Vietnam.But who is seducing or using who?Beautifully written (the books) and directed (movie).

Incroyable
With such intimate tone Marguerite Duras involves us in the story of her childhood. She, daughter of a poor French family in the colonies (South East Asia) has her first romantic experience with a rich Chinese man.

Class, gender, ethnicity, uprootedness, relationships, all of that mingles to create a narrative that flows full of power and feeling. Both the nameless narratrice and her lover are outsiders in a country that is not really theirs, both share a moment and both have complex lives.

I think anyone who has grown in a home full of conflicts and privations can easily identify with the feelings so passionately set to paper by the author. And anyone else can, too: such is the magic of her prose.

The Éditions de Minuit series is rather minimalistic: no prologue, no notes. None are needed.

Pure Art
This autobiographical novel is pure art. I read it in French first, but the translation loses nothing of the suspended breath of emotion so often found in French literature. There is nothing overwritten in the prose nor overstated in the story. The tale of a girl's forbidden passion is breathtaking in its simplicity and poignant in its retelling by a woman now grown old.

Beyond the confines of time & space - utterly haunting.
This is one of those books which captures your total attention and you will never forget it. There is no way to describe it. Beyond the confines of time and space is the only way I can explain it, utterly haunting. It isas if the author is sitting with you, telling you her tale, and you'resuspended in a sort of entranced state, not able to cry, not able to smile,not able to rationalize. It's hypnotic. Based on Duras' early life, you canhardly believe this tale to be true. Do people feel such emotions? Couldthere be a love so strange and haunting as this?I cannot ignore the ingeniousness of her web-weaving tale. You can see this "drifter" waif of a girlwearing the man's fedora, pressing her lips against the glass of thewindow, you can see her, as an older woman with a "face laidwaste" as her lost love confesses that he still loves her and willnever stop loving her. In between the illusions of time and space, hermemory remains vivid, lucid, yet with a sort of spiritual calm about it.The sort of calm that comes from having overcome the most profound pain.This work is pure genius. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

passion of wrriting
this book is about passion of wriiting, how some people are facinated by writting, the magic of words & also silence between words, if u look for something amazing forget this book . if the words make u the same that maryjohnna does, welcome to "Ecrire". ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (3)

Love Duras.
I love, love, love this author.I like her style, her brevity, the characters, and the writing.But, she does have a particular voice and writes quite staccato, and it isn't everyone's taste.Still, I urge readers to try her.

Destroy (False Rules of Bourgeoisie)
They certainly don't care that they are in an asylum."Destroy, She Said" is all about not following The Rules laid out by society, but instead following the heart.That is why they are so freely loving with each other.And that is why they intentionally cheat at games in front of the 2nd woman (forgot her name).Their seduction begins with this simple idea that you do not have to follow the rules.Not at cards, or croquet, or in a false, loveless marriage.They like her and include her in their games, but she becomes very frightened because it contradicts everything she has been taught.They aren't trying to frighten her, or hurt her, but she needs to break her addiction to obedience before she can start to be herself, or start to share love with them.This simple idea of following the heart and natural desires instead of false construction of manners and behavior is so powerful that the idea is absolutely destructive to the bourgeois society.That is why things go in a whirlwind at the end - the simple idea of freedom destroys ALL boundaries - social, political, natural even ... maybe?And in destroying old boundaries it is revolutionary - and seems to share something with the communist/humanist ideal. --At least, that's what I think.

nihilistic French minimalism
Two men and two women, all mentally ill, meet in a desolate French convalescent hotel and become their own tiny insular society.They spend much of the book engaging in conversations and semierotic acts which seem utterly pregnant with meaning despite lacking any sort of meaningful foundation whatsoever.This book is built around a whirling nihilistic emptiness which grows more and more pronounced as it proceeds.In the final pages the void roars in every word.Minimal, terrifying.

The interview with Duras that constitutes the second half of the book ranges from the provocative to the opaque. ... Read more

Product Description
Available for the first time in English, "No More (C'est Tout"), written during the last year of Duras's life, is literature shorn of all its niceties, a shout from the depths of the author's being, celebrating life in defiance of death. "Duras's language and writing shine like crystals".--"The New Yorker" Print ads. . ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

an honest(?)look at impending death
This book's greatest values are (a) a look into the mind of a great author approaching death and (b) an interesting writing style ... Duras with a touch of Jabes!Duras approaches death with an honest mix of humanemotions - sometimes very attached to Yann, sometimes reconciled to deathas the ultimate letting go of Yann; sometimes proud and nearly pretentiousregarding her writings, sometimes humbly expecting to be soon forgotten. Unlike some authors writing in similiar straits, Duras feels no need topretend that age has made her wise.Rather she reflects as if age has onlymade her experienced.

If you've not read Duras and have no particularinterest in human reaction to impending death, read several Duras booksbefore reading No More but at some point read No More - it is time wellspent.

Like watching a car crash....
A morbid attraction to the dying words of a great writer that failsgreatly here. Occasionaly there are glimpses of her past greatness but mostof the book is full of nonsense such as like:"I've never beenpretentious.","Both of us are innocents" (Refering to her29 year old lover and her in her 80's (?)),"I don't know how to add.All I know how to do is create."

This very short work is followed byan essay that has some insight but mostly it's serious prose that soundsweighter than it really is. It is written by Christiane Blot-Labarrere whois (according to the book) "among the very few whose writtings wererespected by Duras."

This is the type of book many creative writtingstudents are writting and it is an example of why many intellgent readersdo not read "serious books." Pick up the Lover instead to seethis woaman's greatness. ... Read more

Product Description
Marguerite Duras and Charles Bukowski were each dramatically shaped by their early life experiences, established in the environment of a dysfunctional family. From their early negative exposure and emotional indoctrination to life, Duras and Bukowski each developed as individuals who, at a young age, acted out behavior that was in direct conflict with the commonly accepted standard of their individual societal norms. From the moment these authors made the adolescent choices that they did, the rest of their physical and emotional existence was ultimately defined. What was created was a body of literary work that truly came to shape modern erotic literature. ... Read more

Product Description
This erotic novel won the Prix Goncourt award. Set in 1930s Saigon, this is the portrayal of an incandescent relationship between a young French girl and the elegant son of a wealthy Chinese family, and of the hate that slowly tears the girl's family apart. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Short, direct and shameless
What a delicious little book full of perfect sentences.(Outstanding begining) Impresive lirisms impregnates de hole of the book as much as a hang over. After days of alcohol, with a disturbed brain, Duras built this incredible monument to the me myshelf. She has a pefect style, perfect sentence, hard sharp brain, cruelity, aloofness, pride, arrogance and tenderness (Helene Lagonelle)
I will surely recommended and always advice toread in french.

appalling
Learn to read them properly. They are sacred.
-Marguerite Duras speaking of her own writing

They say masturbation makes morons of children. It wasn't the case with me. On the contrary, it brought me reason, revolt and joy.
-Marguerite Duras speaking of herself

These two quotations, which the critic Robert Fulford cites in his review of a biography of Ms Duras, provide us with some perspective on how we're supposed
to react to this semi-autobiographical novel.For the novel is itself masturbatory, an act of self-love.And only someone who considers themself to be a kind of
divine could possibly imagine that readers would find beautiful and moving the story of her own childhood whoredom.

Ms Duras seems to have been a profoundly despicable person, a collaborator with the Nazis in Vichy France, then switching to the Communists just in time to
save her skin, disliked by even her "friends", and apparently filled with well-deserved self-loathing.Here she tells the altogether unpleasant tale of a 15 year
old French girl in Indochina who, her family having fallen on hard times, seduces a rich Chinese man twice her age in order to become his kept woman.It is a
love story that is devoid of love, a piece of erotica that is singularly unerotic, a coming of age tale by an author who seems to have spent in life trapped in the
self-centeredness of childhood.It. like its author, is simply appalling.

GRADE : F ... Read more

Product Description
For fifty years, celebrated literary figure Marguerite Duras kept four small notebooks filled with writings from the World War II years hidden in a closet in her country home in France. Published in their entirety for the first time, these remarkable wartime writings include slices of autobiography and feature the early drafts of and true stories behind Duras' most famous works. Hailed as a "marvel and a treasure" (Le Monde), Wartime Writings chronicles the poignant circumstances of her childhood in colonial Vietnam, her experiences with the French Resistance during the war, and the conflicted and exhilarating time of the Liberation and the early postwar years. Throughout, Duras paints an unflinching portrait of this troubled and formative period for France. ... Read more

Product Description
Through a discussion of Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, Mieke Bal and others, author Michaela Grobbel focuses on the work three women authors as types of performance which lead to re-presentations of memory. These women writers foreground the present but also critically demonstrate the complex relationship of the present to the past. Grobbel's work is a critical addition to any discussion of feminism, memory and literary modernism. ... Read more