Marguerite Duras Biography

Marguerite Duras was an author whose early novels were fairly conventional in form, but with Moderato Cantabile, she became more experimental. She pared down her texts to give ever-increasing importance to what was not said, and was associated with the Nouveau roman literary movement, though she never definitively belonged to any group. Her films are also experimental, often eschewing synch sound and using voice-over to allude to a story over images whose relation to what is said may be tangential. Duras frequently explored themes of memory, desire, and violence, interweaving autobiographical elements with fiction and examining the complexities of human relationships.