Duras     by Alain Vircondelet, Translated by Thomas Buckley Original title: Duras: Biographie Published by Dalkey Archive Press Pub. Date: December 1, 1994 Format: Cloth, 378 pages ISBN: 1564780651 List Price: $24.95 buy now directly from the publisher Free Shipping Worldwide

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This is the first full-length biography of one of the best-known and most influential French writers of our time, as celebrated for her films (Hiroshima Mon Amour) as for her novels ( The Ravishing of Lol Stein, The Lover). It takes D uras from colonial Indochina (where she was born in 1914) to wartime France, through the intellectual skirmishes of the 1950s and leftist movements of the 1960s, up to the present time. An autobiographical writer by nature, Duras has poured her exotic lif e into her books, and Vircondelet is the first to separate fact from fiction, leading us to a greater appreciation of her inimitable fiction.

Although it gives a full, chronological account of Duras's life and work, Duras is not a conventional biography. " In order to give an exact account of her life, her inner workings," Vircondelet explains in his preface, "one needs to acquire and rediscover a secret, a kind of alchemy, the nature of her 'fluent writing,' as she calls it." Employing a kind of "fluent wr iting" himself, Vircondelet brings a rare empathy to his task, allowing him to discover secret connections between the life and work. Both a mesmerizing biography and an innovative work of literary criticism, Duras is a bold and unforgettable achievement. First published in France in 1991, the book has been updated by the author for this English translation. It is illustrated with 37 photographs.

"I would like to see someone write about me the way I write. Such a book would include everything at once."—Marguerite Duras, Le Magazine litteraire

"The story of your life, of my life, doesn't exist, or perhaps it's a question of semantics. The novel of my life, our lives, yes, but not the story. When the past is recaptured by the imagination, breath is put back into life."—Marguerite Duras, Le Nouvel Observateur

"Duras is a riveting read."—Vogue

"A welcome complement to Marguerite Duras's prolific literary career. . . . [Vircondelet] knows Duras's work and reads it well."—Kirkus Reviews

"Vircondelet, writing in the present tense with flash forwards, uses a style that is lush, poetic, vivid, elliptical."—Choice

"Vircondelet, one of Duras' first serious critics and staunchest admirers, has written a purposefully literary biography that attempts to emulate D uras' lean and piercing prose. This approach is . . . engagingly lyrical. . . . Vircondelet succeeds in capturing Duras' unfailingly subversive and defiant personality; recording the main events in her unusual, hectic, and productive life; and explicating the symbolism and person she has evolved over her 50-year career. . . . When Vircondelet draws aside the veil of Duras' fiction, he uncovers an author every bit as untamed, daring, alluring, and invincible as her confounding heroines."— Booklist

"Duras has lived a romantic, rebellious life . . . and Vircondelet's biography is dizzyingly romantic to suit his subject."—Michael Perkins

"Vircondelet pays . . . the ultimate tribute to his subjects incantatory vision by narrating her life in a typically Durasi an manner. Composed entirely in the present tense, the biography is an example of 'fluent writing' which, according to Vircondelet, is the only appropriate means by which to communicate Duras' erratic, hermetic, yet fervently lived life. . . . There is pl enty to Duras to engage us."—Harvard Review