Marguerite Duras was born in Saigon in 1914 and died in Paris in 1996. She was a French film maker, novelist and script writer, whose writings have left their mark on the fictional genre. She was a pioneer of the "nouveau roman", writing a series of novels in the 60s where formal elements were reduced to the minimum, the protagonists were elusive and plot was replaced by a succession of details, marked by silence, hesitation and the unspoken. After writing scenarios and dialogues for the cinema she turned to directing her own films. Her greatest popular success was in 1984 when her book, "The Lover" (L'Amant) won the Prix Goncourt.
