17 Facts About Marguerite Duras

Marguerite Duras' father fell ill and he returned to France, where he died in 1921.

Marguerite Duras returned to Saigon in late 1932 where her mother found a teaching post.

Marguerite Duras continued her education, earning a diplome d'etudes superieures in public law and, later, in political economy.

Marguerite Duras became an active member of the PCF and a member of the French Resistance as a part of a small group that included Francois Mitterrand, who later became President of France and remained a lifelong friend of hers.

Marguerite Duras nursed him back to health, but they divorced once he recovered.

Marguerite Duras was the author of many novels, plays, films, interviews, essays, and works of short fiction, including her best-selling, highly fictionalized autobiographical work L'Amant, translated into English as The Lover, which describes her youthful affair with a Chinese-Vietnamese man.

Marguerite Duras was the screenwriter of the 1959 French film Hiroshima mon amour, which was directed by Alain Resnais.

Marguerite Duras was associated with the nouveau roman French literary movement, although she did not belong definitively to any one group.

In 1971, Marguerite Duras signed the Manifesto of the 343, thereby publicly announcing that she had had an abortion.

Towards the end of her life, Marguerite Duras published a short, 54-page autobiographical book as a goodbye to her readers and family.

Marguerite Duras died at her home in Paris on 3 March 1996, aged 81.

Marguerite Duras had a wide circle of influential friends, ranging from writers and artists to intellectuals and even criminals.

In parallel with her health issues during the 1980s, Marguerite Duras began a relationship with Yann Andrea, a homosexual actor.

In 1992, following a dinner with friends where Marguerite Duras was dismissed as the most overrated author of the time, journalist Etienne de Montety copied L'Apres-midi de Monsieur Andesmas, one of Marguerite Duras' lesser-known works from 1962.

Marguerite Duras made only minor changes, such as altering the names of the characters and renaming the title to Margot et l'important.

Marguerite Duras sent the result under the alias "Guillaume P Jacquet" to the three main publishers of Duras: Gallimard, POL and Editions de Minuit.

The account by Yann Andrea of his relationship with Marguerite Duras was brought to the screen in a 2022 Claire Simon film entitled Vous ne desirez que moi with Swann Arlaud as Andrea and Emmanuelle Devos as journalist Michele Manceaux, subsequently issued on DVD by Blaq Out.