Marguerite Duras was one of the leading intellectuals & novelist of post-war France, but her wartime writings were not published in full until after her death. The Wartime Notebooks trace Duras`s formative experiences
- including her difficult childhood in Indochina & her harrowing wait for her husband`s return from Nazi internment
- revealing the personal history behind her bestselling novels. The Lover is the best known of these; set in pre-war Indochina, its haunting tale of a tumultuous affair between an adolescent French girl & her wealthy Chinese lover is based on her own life. In spare & luminous prose, Duras evokes life on the margins in the waning days of France`s colonial empire, & the passionate relationship between two unforgettable outcasts. Practicalities is a collection of small & intensely personal pieces Duras dictated near the end of her life. These deceptively simple meditations on motherhood, domesticity, sex, love, alcohol, writing, & more are witty, earthy, outspoken & surprisingly fresh & relevant to the same issues today.