Author Guide · Literary Fiction
Books Written by
Marguerite Donnadieu was born in 1914 near Saigon, in what was then French Indochina, and grew up there with a widowed mother who sank her savings into a rice concession the sea flooded every year. She left for Paris at the end of her teens, worked for the wartime paper office, joined the Resistance, and from 1943 published under the name Duras, after her father’s home village. Fifty years of novels, plays and films followed, but the book that made her famous worldwide came when she was seventy: The Lover (1984), the story of a French girl and a Chinese man on the Mekong, which won the Prix Goncourt. This guide covers her 12 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 12 key books · 1950–1993 · Updated October 2026
ClickTap a spine to jump to that book below.
Quick answer
Marguerite Duras’s best-known books are The Lover (1984), winner of the Prix Goncourt, The Sea Wall (1950), Moderato Cantabile (1958), The Ravishing of Lol Stein (1964) and her screenplay for Hiroshima mon amour (1959). Start with The Lover: it is short, and it opens the door to the Indochina childhood she rewrote across her whole career.
Where to Start with Marguerite Duras
If you want her most famous book
→ The Lover (1984) — the Prix Goncourt winner of 1984.
If you want a conventional, story-driven novel
→ The Sea Wall (1950) — the same Indochina childhood, told straight.
If you want her spare, strange style in a short novel
→ Moderato Cantabile (1958).
If you want her true war story
→ The War (1985) — waiting for her husband to come back from the camps.
12 Marguerite Duras Books, in Order
The Sea Wall
Originally Un barrage contre le Pacifique, her third novel and first success. A widowed mother in colonial Indochina has spent everything on a concession that the Pacific floods every year, and builds sea walls against it while her children, Joseph and Suzanne, look for a way out. René Clément filmed it in 1958, and Rithy Panh in 2008.
The Sailor from Gibraltar
A man walks out of his job and his relationship on holiday in Italy and joins Anna, a rich woman who sails the world on her yacht looking for a sailor she once loved. Tony Richardson adapted it for the cinema in 1967, from a script by Christopher Isherwood.
Moderato Cantabile
During her son’s piano lesson, Anne Desbaresdes hears a scream from a café below, where a man has just killed a woman. She goes back to the café day after day to talk about the crime with a stranger, Chauvin. Peter Brook filmed it in 1960 with Jeanne Moreau and Jean-Paul Belmondo.
Hiroshima mon amour
Her script for Alain Resnais’s 1959 film: a French actress shooting a film in Hiroshima spends a night with a Japanese architect and tells him about her first love, a German soldier, in occupied Nevers. The screenplay was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
The Ravishing of Lol Stein
At a dance, Lol V. Stein watches her fiancé leave with another woman, Anne-Marie Stretter. Years later, married and outwardly settled, she begins to watch her old friend Tatiana and Tatiana’s lover, who narrates the book. The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan wrote that Duras “turns out to know what I teach without me”.
The Vice-Consul
In Calcutta, the French colony shuns the vice-consul of Lahore, disgraced for firing shots into the Shalimar gardens, who is drawn to the ambassador’s wife, Anne-Marie Stretter. Alongside runs the story of a beggar woman walking from Cambodia to India. It was the basis for her later India Song.
India Song
A text written for the stage and the screen, returning to Anne-Marie Stretter and the vice-consul in 1930s Calcutta, told through voices that are never seen. Duras directed the film herself in 1975, and it won a prize from the French art-house cinema association at Cannes.
The Malady of Death
A very short text addressed to “you”: a man pays a woman to spend a series of nights with him in a room by the sea, to try to learn how to love. It is one of the late books she wrote during her years with Yann Andréa.
The Lover
An old woman remembers herself at fifteen and a half, crossing the Mekong on a ferry in a man’s hat, and the rich Chinese man from Cholon who became her lover, against the background of her ruined mother and violent brother. It won the 1984 Prix Goncourt, sold a million copies in forty-three languages, and was filmed by Jean-Jacques Annaud in 1992.
The War
Originally La Douleur: wartime notebooks about waiting in Paris in April 1945 for her husband, Robert Antelme, deported in 1944 for his Resistance work, and nursing him when he came back barely alive. Duras said she had forgotten writing them. Further pieces describe her own Resistance activity and her dealings with a Gestapo agent.
The North China Lover
A rewriting of The Lover, written while Jean-Jacques Annaud was making his film of it: the same girl and the same Chinese man, told at greater length and laid out with notes for the camera, as if it were a film she had made herself.
Writing
Originally Écrire, short texts from the end of her life on the solitude writing needs, set largely in her house at Neauphle-le-Château, where she wrote many of her books. It was one of the last books she published before her death in 1996.
In What Order to Read Marguerite Duras
Duras has no series, but she returns to the same material all her life: the Indochina childhood (The Sea Wall, The Lover, The North China Lover) and the Calcutta of Anne-Marie Stretter (Lol Stein, The Vice-Consul, India Song). Reading each group in publication order shows how she rewrote one story in a barer style each time.
The Sea Wall is the easiest way in if you want a conventional plot; The Lover covers the same ground in a much shorter book. Leave The Malady of Death and India Song until you are used to her silences.
A reading path
1. The Lover (1984)
2. The Sea Wall (1950)
3. Moderato Cantabile (1958)
4. The Ravishing of Lol Stein (1964)
5. The War (1985)
Everything Else Marguerite Duras Published
Beyond the 12 key books: 14 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Early novels
4
4 books · 1943–1955
- 1943Les Impudentsher first novel, the first book signed Duras
- 1944La Vie tranquilleher second novel
- 1953The Little Horses of Tarquiniaa holiday among friends in a hot Italian village
- 1955The Squaretwo strangers talk on a park bench
Novels of the 1960s
4
4 books · 1960–1969
- 1960Ten-Thirty on a Summer Nighta woman, her husband and a murderer in Spain
- 1962The Afternoon of Monsieur Andesmasa short novel
- 1967L’Amante anglaisea murder told through interviews
- 1969Destroy, She Saidwhich she also filmed
Late books
6
6 books · 1980–1995
- 1980The Man Sitting in the Corridora short novel
- 1982The Atlantic Mana short text, also a film
- 1986Blue Eyes, Black Haira novel
- 1987Emily L.a novel
- 1992Yann Andréa Steinerabout her companion Yann Andréa
- 1995C’est touther last words, recorded by Yann Andréa
The years · 1914–1996
Quick facts about Marguerite Duras
- Known for
- Marguerite Duras is known for spare, haunted novels and films about desire, memory and loss, above all the Indochina childhood she turned into The Lover.
- 1914
- Born in Gia Định, French Indochina
- 1943
- First novel, published as Duras
- 1959
- Hiroshima mon amour, Oscar-nominated script
- 1984
- The Lover wins the Goncourt
- 1996
- Dies in Paris, aged 81
- Born
- 4 April 1914, Gia Định, near Saigon, French Indochina
- Real name
- Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu; Duras is her father’s home village in Lot-et-Garonne
- War
- Member of the Resistance in a group that included François Mitterrand
- Married
- Robert Antelme (1939), then Dionys Mascolo, father of her son Jean
- Film
- Oscar nomination for Hiroshima mon amour; directed India Song (1975) and other films
- Prizes
- Prix Goncourt (1984) for The Lover
- Died
- 3 March 1996, Paris, aged 81
The red mark is 1984: The Lover, which won the Prix Goncourt and made her famous worldwide.
How Marguerite Duras Writes: Few Words, the Same Story
Duras writes in short sentences, with repetitions and long gaps, leaving out most of what a conventional novel explains. Dialogue carries much of Moderato Cantabile, and The Malady of Death is addressed to “you” without giving either character a name. Critics linked her to the nouveau roman of the 1950s; she denied any connection.
She keeps returning to the same people and places. Anne-Marie Stretter appears in The Ravishing of Lol Stein, The Vice-Consul and India Song; the girl, the mother and the brothers of Indochina run from The Sea Wall (1950) to The Lover (1984) and The North China Lover (1991), each version barer and more openly about herself.
Her writing and her films feed each other. From the late 1960s she directed her own films, among them India Song (1975), often with the voices separated from the images, and several late books exist as both text and film. Her life is close to the surface throughout: the war in The War, and her companion Yann Andréa in the books of the 1980s and 1990s.
Frequently asked questions about Marguerite Duras’s books
How many books has Marguerite Duras written?
Several dozen novels, plays, screenplays and essays. This page covers her 12 key books, from The Sea Wall (1950) to Writing (1993), and lists 14 more in the bibliography, from her first novel, Les Impudents (1943), to C’est tout (1995).
What are Marguerite Duras’s books in order?
The Sea Wall (1950), The Sailor from Gibraltar (1952), Moderato Cantabile (1958), Hiroshima mon amour (1959), The Ravishing of Lol Stein (1964), The Vice-Consul (1966), India Song (1973), The Malady of Death (1982), The Lover (1984), The War (1985), The North China Lover (1991) and Writing (1993).
Where should I start with Marguerite Duras?
The Lover (1984). It is short, it won the Prix Goncourt, and it introduces the Indochina childhood she wrote about all her life. If you prefer a conventional plot, start with The Sea Wall (1950).
What is Marguerite Duras’s most famous book?
The Lover (L’Amant, 1984), about a French girl of fifteen and a half and her Chinese lover in 1930s Indochina. It won the Prix Goncourt and sold a million copies in forty-three languages.
Is The Lover a true story?
It is autobiographical, but not a straight memoir. Duras drew on her own adolescence in Indochina, and told the same story differently in The Sea Wall (1950) and The North China Lover (1991), so the versions do not all agree.
Has The Lover been made into a film?
Yes. Jean-Jacques Annaud directed The Lover (1992), produced by Claude Berri, with Jane March and Tony Leung Ka-fai. Duras wrote The North China Lover (1991) while the film was being made, as her own version of the story.
Did Marguerite Duras write Hiroshima mon amour?
She wrote the screenplay for Alain Resnais’s 1959 film, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. She later directed films of her own, including India Song (1975).
What was the Villemin affair article by Marguerite Duras?
On 17 July 1985 the newspaper Libération published her front-page article “Sublime, forcément sublime Christine V.”, which suggested that Christine Villemin, whom Duras had never met, had killed her four-year-old son Grégory. The article was widely criticised, Duras never retracted it, and in 1993 the French courts formally cleared Christine Villemin. Her record during the Occupation has also been discussed: from 1942 to 1944 she worked in an office that allocated paper to publishers and in effect decided which books could be printed, before joining the Resistance.
Is Marguerite Duras still alive?
No. She died at her home in Paris on 3 March 1996, aged 81. She was born on 4 April 1914 in Gia Định, French Indochina.
Who was Yann Andréa?
A much younger man, gay, who became her companion from 1980 until her death. She wrote about him in several late books, including Yann Andréa Steiner (1992), and he recorded the last words published as C’est tout (1995).
Footnotes
- Marguerite Duras — Wikipedia
- Marguerite Duras — Encyclopædia Britannica
- In Love with Duras — The New York Review of Books, 2008
- Marguerite Duras — The Modern Novel
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Very early in my life it was too late.”
— Marguerite Duras, The Lover (1984), translated by Barbara Bray
If this shelf interested you, the full bookshelf has more: reading lists by theme, author guides, and notes on what is actually worth your time.
Browse the full bookshelf Get book recommendations