Duras' screenplay Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959) was based on the novel by Alain Resnais and made into a film directed by Resnais. The story is set in Tokyo during World War II and concerns the love affair between a French actress and a Japanese architect.

India Song is loosely based on Duras's novel Le Vice-consul (The vice-consul), published in 1966. The novel is focused on the stories of two central characters: a French vice-consul stationed in Calcutta and a teenaged Asian girl who is abandoned by her mother after she becomes pregnant.

Duras's most popular novel, L'Amant (The Lover), published in 1984, is the autobiographical story of a relationship between an impoverished fifteen-year-old French girl and her wealthy middle-aged Chinese lover.

Collected Plays (1980), by Nathalie Sarraute (a Russian-born, French feminist playwright contemporary of Duras), includes It Is There, It's Beautiful, Issum, The Lie...