Marguerite Duras, one of France's most important writers, was a member of the French Resistance movement throughout the Second World War. Written in 1944 but not published until 1985, this is her compelling personal story of living in Paris during the Nazi occupation and the first months of liberation.


From Publishers Weekly
In Nazi-occupied France during WW II, Duras (The Lovers; Hiroshima, Mon Amour was a major figure in the Resistance. During the chaos attending the liberation of Paris in 1944 she wrote a diaryhitherto unpublished and long-forgotten by herwhich forms the opening and major segment of this short, memorable book. Here, unrevised, in vivid staccato prose that sears with its emotion, is an account of her agonized waiting at the Gare d'Orsay and elsewhere for the arrival of her husband, Robert L., who (she learned from Resistance contacts including "Morland," in actuality Francois Mitterrand), was among newly liberated POWs found in Belsen and other death camps. That Robert L. arrived home more dead than alive proved devastating to Duras; it will strike readers no less powerfully. This volume, which includes with the diary war recollections treated as stories and an account about a Gestapo agent in Paris, rates a special place among WW II memoirs. Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
This memoir comprises four autobiographical and two "invented" sketches set in Paris during and after the Liberation. The finest, which Duras says lay forgotten for years, dramatizes the French author's agonizing vigil for her husband Robert. When he returns from Belsen a living skeleton, she endures a struggle even more agonizing to nurse him back to life. Eventually Duras announces that she is divorcing him. "He didn't ask me my reasons for leaving. I didn't tell him what they were." Other sections detailing Duras's activities as a member of the Resistance are written in the same stark, unadorned prose that distinguished her novel The Lover ( LJ 6/1/85). Highly recommended. Grove Koger, Boise P.L., Id.Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.


New York Times Book Review
An astonishing meditation on the horrors of the war and on the obsessive power of personal fidelity in love.


Time
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.


Kirkus Reviews
This book is at once elegant and brutal in its honesty: in Duras's world we are all outcasts, and the word 'liberation' is never free of irony. A powerful, moving work.


Book Description
The extraordinary pages of The War, written in 1944 but finished 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 Franois 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. The result is a book as moving as it is harrowing--perhaps Duras's finest.


Language Notes
Text: English, French (translation)

ANNOTATION

Duras' stunning memoirs of her life in Paris during WWII as a member of the Resistance network headed by Francois Mitterand.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The extraordinary pages of The War, written in 1944 but finished 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 Fran￯﾿ﾽois 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. The result is a book as moving as it is harrowing--perhaps Duras's finest.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

In Nazi-occupied France during WW II, Duras (The Lovers; Hiroshima, Mon Amour was a major figure in the Resistance. During the chaos attending the liberation of Paris in 1944 she wrote a diaryhitherto unpublished and long-forgotten by herwhich forms the opening and major segment of this short, memorable book. Here, unrevised, in vivid staccato prose that sears with its emotion, is an account of her agonized waiting at the Gare d'Orsay and elsewhere for the arrival of her husband, Robert L., who (she learned from Resistance contacts including ``Morland,'' in actuality Francois Mitterrand), was among newly liberated POWs found in Belsen and other death camps. That Robert L. arrived home more dead than alive proved devastating to Duras; it will strike readers no less powerfully. This volume, which includes with the diary war recollections treated as stories and an account about a Gestapo agent in Paris, rates a special place among WW II memoirs. (April 30)

Library Journal