The war

These extraordinary pages, written in 1944 but first 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 François Mitterrand, Duras is swept up in the turmoil of the period. She tells of nursing her starving husband back to life on his return from Belsen; interrogating a suspected collaborator; playing a game of cat and mouse with a Gestapo officer who is attracted to her; and more. The result is a book as moving as it is harrowing - perhaps Duras's finest yet.