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The Impudent Ones: A Novel Kindle Edition
Published for the first time in English, the debut novel of Marguerite Duras—renowned author of The Lover and The War—is the story of a family’s moral reckoning and a daughter’s fall from grace
Marguerite Duras rose to global stardom with her erotic masterpiece The Lover (L’Amant), 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 France.
Duras’s great gift was her ability to bring vivid and passionate life to characters with whom society may not have sympathized, but with whom readers certainly do. With storytelling that evokes in equal parts beauty and brutality, The Impudent Ones depicts the scalding effects of seduction and disrepute on the soul of a young French girl.
Including an essay on the story behind The Impudent Ones by Jean Vallier—biographer of the late Duras—which contextualizes the origins of Duras’s debut novel, this one-of-a-kind publishing endeavor will delight established Duras fans and a new generation of readers alike.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherThe New Press
- Publication dateMarch 9, 2021
- File size1582 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Praise for The Impudent Ones:
“With affairs, suicide, rivalry, gossip, desolation, betrayal, and dysfunction, rendered with touches of Flaubert, the Brontës, and Woolf, and illuminated via invaluable essays by translator Haskett and Duras’ biographer, Jean Vallier, this flawed yet intriguing novel is revealed to be the proving ground on which Duras taught herself how to cast her provocative spell.”
—Booklist
“In this well-cadenced translation by Kelsey L. Haskett, we are given a remarkable first novel that documents ‘the days’ unchanging flow,’ their constraints, conflicts, ‘chasms of light,’ their ferocity and consolations.”
—4Columns
“Two enlightening afterwords enhance this volume—the first by translator Haskett and the second by Duras’s biographer Jean Vallier. . . . The English language version of The Impudent Ones is significant. . . . The book offers a roadmap for what was to come.”
—Martha Anne Toll, NPR Books
“Marguerite Duras’s lyrical first novel explores the same thematic material one finds in the author’s mature work -- a family on the brink of ruin, a mother’s unmeasured love for her destructive eldest son, a young woman’s coming of age, depleted agricultural land, and illicit desire -- allowing readers to encounter one of the foremost French novelists of the twentieth century in a new light. While the story unfolds in provincial France, not in the colonies, and Duras’s prose does not quite have the bare violence of her later novels, her control of narrative and the brutal honesty with which she approaches feminine subjectivity and interrogates social class are already fully realized in ways that anticipate the work of Elena Ferrante; Haskett’s translation is excellent.”
—Kathryn Lachman, associate professor of Comparative Literature at UMass Amherst and author of Borrowed Forms
“Finally we have a masterful English translation of Duras’s first novel. In it one finds the landscapes and characters, moods and affects, that will appear later in her work: the suffocating toxicity of the nuclear family, the misery and boredom of the petite bourgeoisie, the brutality and honesty of young, sensual love, all held together by the dream-like wandering of a central female character refusing to be trapped by any of it. Echoes of Flaubert and Mauriac, but also of Sand and Emily Brontë... and yet Duras was only 26 when the novel was published! Absolutely spellbinding...”
—Alice Jardine, professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University and author of At the Risk of Thinking
“Fans of Marguerite Duras will be happy to discover her first novel, published for the first time in English by The New Press. The Impudent Ones is the work of a young writer still looking for her voice and style, but it explores a family dynamic that would recur in Duras’s best-known works. The drama of a mother whose love of her good-for-nothing son overshadows all other affections, and a daughter caught between her love for her mother and her loathing of her rascally older brother, creates a toxic atmosphere that Duras’s readers will recognize from works like The Lover and The Seawall. Bravo to The New Press for making The Impudent Onesavailable to the English-speaking public!”
—Susan Rubin Suleiman, professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University and author of The Némirovsky Question
About the Author
Marguerite Duras (1914-1996) is the internationally known author of the Prix Goncourt-winning novel The Lover, as well as The War, The North China Lover, Moderato Cantabile, and the screenplays of Hiroshima mon amour, India Song, and other works.
Product details
- ASIN : B08D1Y2Q6L
- Publisher : The New Press (March 9, 2021)
- Publication date : March 9, 2021
- Language : English
- File size : 1582 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 257 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 162097651X
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,803,426 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #45,477 in Literary Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #111,232 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- #209,309 in Literature & Fiction (Kindle Store)
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As the novel opens, the family has come down to the country. The mother is attempting to sell the vineyard to a local family and is willing to sacrifice Maud to be their son's wife in order to seal the deal. Maud, on the other hand, is uninterested in the suitor picked for her and is fascinated by a man named George who is a friend of her brother.
This was Duras' debut novel but has only now been translated and available in English. It foreshadows many of the themes that are familiar to readers of Duras' later works such as The Lover. It portrays family dynamics and the second class status of women. Women's sexuality is explored but also seen as a source of shame in the social environment unless all rules are followed.
I listened to this novel. The narrator had a calm voice that accurately portrayed the slow moving action of being in the country and falling into relationships. After the book was over, there was about an hour of supplementary material, discussing Duras' work in general and the path that this book took to get to market. It took several years and reworking before it was published. Readers will be intrigued by the intricate familial relationships and the dawning of women demanding to be valued as much as men. This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.
Set in France in the first half of the 20th century, the novel explores social standings and expectations, reputation and consequences. At the center of the story is a family with two young adults, Maud and her brother. Maud is coming of age and eager for love. There is a lot of talk about marriage and a proper match. Maud makes some choices that wind up with her being in a less than ideal situation.
I wanted to connect more with this novel but it was missing a bit of an oomph factor for me that perhaps Duras acquired in her later works. I definitely still plan on reading Duras' previously translated works because I did enjoy her writing style. I can see why Elena Ferrante is compared to her.