French · 1914–1996
Marguerite Duras wrote in fragments and silences. "The Lover" (1984) won the Prix Goncourt for its account of a fifteen-year-old French girl's affair with a Chinese man in colonial Vietnam; autobiography, fiction, and memory merge into something irreducible. "The Ravishing of Lol Stein" (1964) tracks obsession through fractured prose. Duras also directed films, including "India Song." Born in French Indochina, she joined the Resistance during the war and spent her life circling trauma: loss, desire, the impossibility of possession.