The Impudent Ones

Marguerite Duras, the Elena Ferrante of French literature, rose to global stardom with her erotic masterpiece The Lover, which won the prestigious Prix Goncourt, has over a million copies in print in English, has been translated into forty-three languages, and was adapted into a canonical film in 1992.

While almost all of Duras’s novels have been translated into English, her debut The Impudent Ones (Les Impudents) has been a glaring exception until now. Fans of Duras will be thrilled to discover the germ of her bold, vital prose and signature blend of memoir and fiction in this intense and mournful story of the Taneran family, which introduces Duras’s classic themes of familial conflict, illicit romance, and scandal in the sleepy suburbs and southwest provinces of postwar France.

With storytelling that evokes in equal parts beauty and brutality, Duras depicts the scalding effect of seduction and disrepute on the soul of a young French girl. Duras’s great gift was her ability to bring to vivid and passionate life characters with whom society may not have sympathized, but with whom readers certainly do. Through its striking prose and strong feminist themes, The Impudent Ones will delight established Duras fans and a new generation of readers alike.