The War: A Memoir by Marguerite Duras (English) Paperback Book

Description: The War by Marguerite Duras, Barbara Bray This is Durass harrowing memoir of war and revenge, reissued for the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Paris. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description This work, written in 1944, but published in 1985, form a totally new image of the heroine of "The Lover" and, through her, of Paris during the Nazi occupation and the first months of liberation. Married and living in Paris, part of a resistance network headed by Francois Mitterand, Duras is swept up in the turmoil of the period. She tells of nursing her starving husband back to life on his return from Bergen-Belsen, interrogating a suspected collaborator, and playing a game of cat and mouse with a Gestapo officer who is attracted to her. Author Biography Marguerite Duras (1914–1996) was one of Frances most important literary figures. She is the author of such acclaimed novels as The Lover, The Ravishing of Lol Stein, and The Sailor from Gibraltar and wrote the screenplay for Hiroshima Mon Amour. The New Press has published translations of her books The North China Lover, The War, and Wartime Writings. Review "An astonishing meditation on the horrors of the war and on the obsessive power of personal fidelity in love."—New York Times Book Review"No recent memoir has evoked the 1940s in France so eloquently or paid such close attention to suffering and emotional numbness. The diarist spares no one, neither the victims, the victors, the reader, nor herself."—Time"Marguerite Durass writing reminds one of the late Red Smiths simple advice on how to write: just sit at your typewriter, open a vein, and let it out, drop by drop. . . . Duras writes in an unmannered prose, so spare its very stylelessness is itself a style, using cinematic, fragmented technique."—Virginia Quarterly Review"This book is at once elegant and brutal in its honesty: in Durass world we are all outcasts, and the word liberation is never free of irony. A powerful, moving work."—Kirkus Reviews Kirkus US Review This 1944 diary of a young Resistance member, written during the last days of the French occupation and the first days of the liberation, is only now being published - Duras says she forgot about it during the intervening years, and only recently rediscovered it in a cupboard. The loneliness and ambivalence of love and war have appeared in Duras work before, from The Lover to Hiroshima Mon Amour, in which a Frenchwoman reveals to her Japanese lover, after the bomb, that she was tortured and imprisoned in postwar France for her affair with a German soldier. In the first section of The War, Duras the heroine waits for her husband to return from the Belsen concentration camp. When De Gaulle ("by definition leader of the Right - ") says, "The days of weeping are over. The days of glory have returned," Duras says, "We shall never forgive him." Its because hes denying the peoples loss. When her husband returns, she has to hide the cake she baked for him, because the weight of food in his system can kill. (We are spared no detail of his physical degradation, even to being told the color of his stools.) When he is stronger, she tells him she is divorcing him to marry another Resistance member. In the second section, set earlier, at the time of her husbands arrest, a Gestapo official plays a cat-and-mouse game with Duras, to whom hes attracted, preying on her desperation to help her husband. In the third section, post-liberation, she switches roles, becomes an interrogator as Resistance members torture a Nazi informer. She also half-falls in love (with characteristic Duras dualism) with a young prisoner who childishly joined the collaborationist forces out of nothing more than a passion for fast cars and guns. In her preface, Duras says it "appalls" her to reread this memoir, because it is so much more important than her literary work. Certainly, like everything she has written in her spare, impassive voice, the book is at once elegant and brutal in its honesty: in her world, we are all outcasts, and the word "liberation" is never free of irony. A powerful, moving work. (Kirkus Reviews) Review Quote "An astonishing meditation on the horrors of the war and on the obsessive power of personal fidelity in love." -- New York Times Book Review "No recent memoir has evoked the 1940s in France so eloquently or paid such close attention to suffering and emotional numbness. The diarist spares no one, neither the victims, the victors, the reader, nor herself." -- Time "Marguerite Durass writing reminds one of the late Red Smiths simple advice on how to write: just sit at your typewriter, open a vein, and let it out, drop by drop. . . . Duras writes in an unmannered prose, so spare its very stylelessness is itself a style, using cinematic, fragmented technique." -- Virginia Quarterly Review "This book is at once elegant and brutal in its honesty: in Durass world we are all outcasts, and the word liberation is never free of irony. A powerful, moving work." -- Kirkus Reviews Details ISBN1565842219 Author Barbara Bray Short Title WAR Pages 192 Language English Translator Barbara Bray ISBN-10 1565842219 ISBN-13 9781565842212 Media Book Format Paperback Year 1994 Imprint The New Press Subtitle A Memoir Place of Publication New York Translated from French Birth 1914 Death 1996 Residence FR DOI 10.1604/9781565842212 Country of Publication United Kingdom AU Release Date 1994-08-18 NZ Release Date 1994-08-18 Publisher The New Press DEWEY 940.548144 Audience General Publication Date 1994-09-15 UK Release Date 1994-09-15 We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:11091914;

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