Writing

Written in the splendid bareness of her late style, these pages are Marguerite Duras’s theory of literature. Comparing a dying fly to the work of style; remembering the trance and incurable disarray of writing, recreating the last moments of a British pilot shot during World War II and buried next to her house, or else letting out a magisterial "So what?" to question six decades of story telling, all operate as a deceitful yet indispensable confession. This is the final literary testament of one of the greatest French writers of the twentieth century.

About the author: Born in 1914 in French Indochina, Marguerite Duras, one of France’s most important 20th century literary figures, is perhaps best known in the U.S. for her screenplay Hiroshima, Mon Amour and her novel, The Lover, which won the 1984 Prix Goncourt and was made into a widely acclaimed film released in 1992. Mme. Duras died on the fourth of March, 1996. About the Translator: Mark Polizzotti is the author of Revolution of the Mind: The Life of Andre Breton (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1995) and, in collaboration, the novel S. (Lumen Editions, 1997). His previous translations include works by Breton, Jean Echenoz, Rene Daumal, Maurice Roche, and Patrick Modiano.