The novella started with the daily routine of a rich woman, Anne Desbaresdes.
Selling half a million copies, Moderato Cantabile was one of the major works which built Duras’ fame. Its film version was first released in 1958 before the Cambodian director Rithy Panh shot a remake in 2008, with French actress Isabelle Huppert: Moderato Cantabile (1958): Their living conditions are deplorable… Disillusioned after seeing the dams which protected her rice fields destroyed by the Pacific, Ma therefore starts sinking into madness. The Sea Wall is the story a widow called « Ma » and her two children, Joseph (20) and Suzanne (16) who live in Indochina. The Sea Wall – Un barrage contre le pacifique (1950) Produced by Claude Berri and directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, a film version of the book was released in 1992. It describes the author’s youthful love affair with an unnamed Chinese man. Written mostly in the first person, this memoir takes place in Duras’ birthplace Saigon. This is her best-selling (more than 2 400 000 copies around about 35 countries) book. Novels, essays, fictions, Duras spent her life creating masterpieces. Her writting was mostly inspired by her life experience in south-eastern Asia. This is screaming silently »īorn in Gia-Dinh (a former name for Saigon), French Indochina (now Vietnam), Marguerite Donnedieu – known as Marguerite Duras – is an icon of French litterature. French writer Marguerite Duras would have turned 100 years old on April 4th.