In her last book, Marguerite Duras meditates with a fierce poetic fervor on facing death, her life’s literary work, and love. Sex, and death. All of Marguerite Duras's writings are suffused with the certitude that absolute love is both necessary (sex) and impossible to achieve (death). But no book of hers embodies this idea so powerfully, so excessively, as No More (C'est Tout), the book she composed during the last year of her life until just days before her death. No More (C'est Tout) is literature shorn of all its niceties, a shout from the depths of Duras's being, celebrating life in defiance of the death she knew had already entered her immediate future. In part, it is also Duras' raucous salutation welcoming death. No More is a collection as pure as poetry and her words and ideas recirculate in hypnotic fits of lucidity, desperation, and noise, but the overall effect is both unsettling and, at times, piercingly true.
Marguerite Duras Book order
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.







- 2023
- 2022
- 2021
The Impudent Ones
- 256 pages
- 9 hours of reading
Exploring a family's moral dilemmas, this previously untranslated story delves into the complexities of a daughter's fall from grace. The renowned author, known for works like The Lover and The War, presents a poignant narrative that examines themes of honor, betrayal, and redemption. This compelling tale offers a deep reflection on personal and familial ethics, making it a significant addition to the literary landscape.
- 2020
The Suspended Passion: Interviews
- 184 pages
- 7 hours of reading
A controversial figure of the postwar French literary and cultural scene, Marguerite Duras has exerted a powerful hold on readers around the world. This volume of interviews--hailed on its French publication as Duras's "secret confession"--offers readers a rich vein of new insight into her work, opinions, life, and relationships. The interviews that make up the book were conducted in 1987, when Italian journalist Leopoldina Pallotta della Torre met the seventy-three-year-old Duras at her Paris flat and convinced her to sit for a series of conversations. The resulting book was published in Italian in 1989, but it somehow failed to attract a French publisher, and it was quickly forgotten. Nearly a quarter of a century later, however, the book was rediscovered and translated into French, and, it has now become a sensation. In its revealing pages, Duras speaks with extraordinary freedom about her life as a writer, her relationship to cinema, her friendship with Mitterand, her love of Chekhov and football, and, perhaps most significantly, her childhood in pre-war Vietnam, the experiences that propelled her most famous novel, The Lover. A true literary event, finally available in English, The Suspended Passion is a remarkable document of an extraordinary literary life.
- 2019
Me & Other Writing
- 204 pages
- 8 hours of reading
The book features a collection of works originally published by Editions P.O.L in Paris, drawing from the themes explored in "Outside" and "Le Monde extâerieur." It presents a unique perspective on the interplay between external environments and personal experiences, showcasing the author's distinctive style and insights.
- 2018
The Garden Square
- 128 pages
- 5 hours of reading
Understated and impressionistic, and consisting almost entirely of dialogue, The Garden Square is one of Marguerite Duras's finest novels, which she also adapted to the stage.
- 2017
The Lover, Wartime Notebooks, Practicalities
- 504 pages
- 18 hours of reading
Marguerite Duras was one of the leading intellectuals and novelist of post-war France, but her wartime writings were not published in full until after her death.
- 2017
The Lover, Wartime Notebooks, Practicalities
Introduction by Rachel Kushner
- 504 pages
- 18 hours of reading
This hardcover omnibus edition features the renowned novel by the French writer, which inspired the film "Memoir of War." It also includes her compelling wartime writings and a selection of personal autobiographical essays, offering deep insights into her experiences and reflections during a tumultuous period. The collection showcases her literary prowess and the profound impact of war on her life and work.
- 2016
Suspended Passion
- 183 pages
- 7 hours of reading
A controversial figure of the postwar French literary and cultural scene, Marguerite Duras has exerted a powerful hold on readers around the world. This volume of interviews--hailed on its French publication as Duras's "secret confession"--offers readers a rich vein of new insight into her work, opinions, life, and relationships. The interviews that make up the book were conducted in 1987, when Italian journalist Leopoldina Pallotta della Torre met the seventy-three-year-old Duras at her Paris flat and convinced her to sit for a series of conversations. The resulting book was published in Italian in 1989, but it somehow failed to attract a French publisher, and it was quickly forgotten. Nearly a quarter of a century later, however, the book was rediscovered and translated into French, and, it has now become a sensation. In its revealing pages, Duras speaks with extraordinary freedom about her life as a writer, her relationship to cinema, her friendship with Mitterand , her love of Chekhov and football, and, perhaps most significantly, her childhood in pre-war Vietnam, the experiences that propelled her most famous novel, The Lover. A true literary event, finally available in English, The Suspended Passion is a remarkable document of an extraordinary literary life.
- 2016
Abahn Sabana David
- 108 pages
- 4 hours of reading
Late one evening, David and Sabana - members of a communist group - arrive at a country house where they meet Abahn, the man they've been sent to guard and eventually kill for his perceived transgressions. A fourth man arrives (also named Abahn), and throughout the night these four characters discuss existential ideas of understanding, capitalism, violence, revolution and dogs, while a gun lurks in the background the entire time. Suspenseful and thought-provoking, Duras's novel explores human existence and suffering in the confusing contemporary world.