Duras, Marguerite << doo rahs, mahr guh reet >> (1914-1996), was a French novelist, playwright, film director, and screenwriter. Her early novels brought her recognition as a fiction writer, but Duras won international fame for her screenplay for the film Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959).
Duras was born to French parents on April 4, 1914, near Saigon, Indochina (now Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam). Her real name was Marguerite Donnadieu. In 1932, she moved to Paris to attend college. Duras began writing in 1942, and wrote more than 35 novels. Three of them were based on her childhood and adolescence in Indochina, The Sea Wall (1950), The Lover (1984), and The North China Lover (1991).
During the 1950’s, her novels reflected the influence of the experimental French movement called the New Novel, which emphasized descriptions of characters’ inner thoughts over plot, and used flashbacks to bring past events into the present. Novels from this period include The Square (1955) and Moderato Cantabile (1958).
Duras directed 19 films. Many were based on novels, plays, or screenplays she wrote. Her films, like her novels, emphasize characters’ states of mind rather than plot, and past and present events that often overlap. Important films include Natalie Granger (1972), India Song (1975), and Baxter, Vera Baxter (1977).
Duras’s later publications include The War: A Memoir (1985). This book tells of her work in the French Resistance and the events leading to the liberation of Paris from the Nazis at the end of World War II (1939-1945). Duras wrote several plays, notably Days of Trees (1982) and Savannah Bay (1982). She died on March 3, 1996.
