"For decades it has been known that Marguerite Duras kept four notebooks in a blue closet in her country home in France. But only now do readers and critics have the chance both to savor this new material and to understand its significance. For in these notebooks, kept between 1943 and 1949, are the first versions of Duras's most famous works, the true stories behind The Lover, The War, and several other classics." "An immediate bestseller in France, these wartime writings reveal the difficult, poignant circumstances of Duras's upbringing in colonial Vietnam, where her desperate mother was eager to sell her to the man who became known as "the lover." Here too is her revulsion at her first kiss and her deep unhappiness over this forced liaison. Once Duras emigrates to France, we follow her life through the war into the Liberation and the horrific events that she observed in the presence of the resistance members, who interrogated and tortured former collaborators. She also tells of the horrendous effect of finding her husband, returning nearly dead from the Nazi concentration camps. Throughout, Duras paints an unflinching picture of this troubled period."--Jacket.