Books by Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Duras (1914-1996) was a French novelist and screenplay writer who spent the first 17 years of her life in what is now in Vietnam. She won France’s prestigious Prix Goncourt in 1984 for her semi-autobiographical novel, The Lover.
“It’s a narrative of life in French colonial Vietnam. It’s the story of a French Catholic schoolgirl whose family has fallen on hard times and of her consensual but scandalous love affair with a rich Chinese Vietnamese. He was 25 and she was only 15 at the time. At the beginning she is attracted by his wealth, but she realizes, in the end, that he was her first love. It was a real reversal of the white expat male with a Vietnamese girl that you see in Graham Greene’s novel, The Quiet American. It broke those stereotypes. It’s radical and it’s an adventure. It just appealed to me when I first read it. It became a bestseller and a million copies were sold.” Read more...
Sherry Buchanan, Journalist
“This is one of the most deeply moving books I’ve ever read. There’s one part of it which is about her partner at the time, Robert Antelme. He was part of the French Resistance and was imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp…Margaret Duras’s book…tells the story of her relationship with him. It’s so powerful….There are a number of novellas within the book that cover different aspects of the war. One, controversially, involves her relationship with a German. But the relationship with Antelm is the one that forms most of the book, and it’s really, really well done. It’s really moving. I was always taken with the idea that you can devote almost every last ounce of your energy to somebody else and then break their heart. It’s the kind of thing that Duras, as a writer, excelled at, this sort of ambivalence and complexity and things that people might not like to dwell on too much. When people think of Margaret Duras, they don’t think of this memoir, but for me, it’s her most powerful, beautiful writing. It’s very elegant and moving. As a woman writing about her experiences in World War Two, about what Nazism did to people and the consequences of trying to bring someone to life after that evil, there’s nothing like it. It’s really extraordinary.” Read more...
The best books on World War II Battles
Alex Kershaw, Historian
“The book is unique and fits in no genre … It’s a “telling” of life, about life. A reflection.” Read more...
Rachel Kushner on Books That Influenced Her
Rachel Kushner, Novelist
“Cuando te pones a estudiarla, ves que Marguerite Duras fue de esa clase de autores que no te dejan indiferente: o la odias o la amas, pero es imposible cualquier término medio. Yo estoy entre los que aman su obra, y considero L’après-midi de Monsieur Andesmas su mejor libro.” Read more...
“When you study Duras, you see that she belonged to that class of authors who don’t leave you indifferent: you either love her or you hate her, and anything in between is impossible. I fall into the group of those who love her work, and to my mind L’après-midi de Monsieur Andesmas is her best book.” Read more...
Interviews where books by Marguerite Duras were recommended
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1
La Bibliothèque invisible
by Stéphane Mahieu -
2
Mirabiblia: Catalogo ragionato di libri introvabili
by Paolo Albani & Paolo della Bella -
3
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
by Laurence Sterne -
4
Nueva Enciclopedia
by Alberto Savinio -
5
The Afternoon of Mr. Andesmas
by Marguerite Duras
Enrique Vila-Matas on Books that Shaped Him
Enrique Vila-Matas on Books that Shaped Him
‘I like to show some restraint when it comes to making things up…’ The Spanish novelist Enrique Vila-Matas discusses the role of risk in writing, the ‘crisis of the novel’, and five books that have shaped his own work. (You can also read this interview in the original Spanish.)
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1
La Bibliothèque invisible
by Stéphane Mahieu -
2
Mirabiblia: Catalogo ragionato di libri introvabili
by Paolo Albani & Paolo della Bella -
3
La vida y las opiniones del caballero Tristram Shandy
by Laurence Sterne, translated by Javier Marías -
4
Nueva Enciclopedia
by Alberto Savinio -
5
The Afternoon of Mr. Andesmas
by Marguerite Duras
Enrique Vila-Matas discute Los libros que le influyeron
Enrique Vila-Matas discute Los libros que le influyeron
‘Me gusta mostrar cierta moderación cuando se trata de inventar cosas …’ El escritor español Enrique Vila-Matas discute la importancia del riesgo en la escritura, la ‘crisis de la novela’, y cinco libros que han influenciado su propia escritura
Rachel Kushner on Books That Influenced Her
Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers and The Mars Room, which has been shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize, discusses the five books that have most influenced her writing, from Dostoyevsky to Marguerite Duras. She muses on the question of what fiction can offer: “A novel itself, if it is good, and effective at whatever its particular aesthetic and philosophical aim is, can answer the question best, so that a novelist doesn’t have to.”
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1
Stalingrad
by Antony Beevor -
2
The Longest Day
by Cornelius Ryan -
3
Reach for the Sky: The Story of Douglas Bader, Hero of the Battle of Britain
by Paul Brickhill -
4
To Hell and Back: The Classic Memoir of World War II by America's Most Decorated Soldier
by Audie Murphy -
5
The War: A Memoir
by Marguerite Duras
The best books on World War II Battles, recommended by Alex Kershaw
The best books on World War II Battles, recommended by Alex Kershaw
In World War II human beings were tested over and over again, and that is part of what explains its enduring fascination, says bestselling historian Alex Kershaw. He recommends five books of great storytelling that immerse you in the drama, the heroism and the tragedy of World War II and also have the benefit of being relatively short.
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1
Orbital
by Samantha Harvey -
2
Small Things Like These
by Claire Keegan -
3
Piranesi
by Susanna Clarke and Chiwetel Ejiofor (narrator) -
4
The Invention of Morel
by Adolfo Bioy Casares, translated by Ruth L. C. Simms -
5
Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad -
6
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
by Shirley Jackson
Short Novels
Short Novels
A short novel can be the perfect way to occupy the mind during an empty evening or a long journey. One can also appreciate a well-written book’s true complexity when it can be read and digested in a single, immersive sitting. Here, we’ve pulled together a list of short literary novels—most of them fewer than 200 pages in length—that have been recommended on Five Books over the years.
The Best Vietnamese Novels, recommended by Sherry Buchanan
Vietnam has had a tumultuous history and its literature is one powerful way of trying to understand it better. Journalist, author and publisher Sherry Buchanan—who has spent two decades introducing Vietnam’s culture to English-speaking audiences—talks us through the best Vietnamese novels available in English, spanning the years from French colonialism to the 2016 Pulitzer Prize.
Deborah Levy on Motherhood in Literature
Aristotle tells us that all politics starts in the family, and nowhere is that more obvious than in the infamously fraught relationship between mother and daughter. Here, the novelist, playwright and poet Deborah Levy chooses five books – or rather, four books and one film – that explore motherhood.
