SOURCE: "Marguerite Duras, 81, Author Who Explored Love and Sex," in The New York Times, March 4, 1996, p. C10.

In the following excerpt, Riding remarks on Duras's life and literature.

Marguerite Duras, author of the best-selling novel The Lover and one of the most widely read French writers of the postwar era, died today at her home in Paris. She was 81.

Miss Duras, who was also a prolific playwright, film maker and screenwriter, was best known for the way she used her early life in French Indochina as the inspiration for many of her works, including The Lover, the story of her clandestine teen-age romance with a wealthy young Chinese man….

[H]er plays continue to be performed regularly in France. However, despite the enormous success of her screenplay for Alain Resnais's 1960 classic, "Hiroshima, Mon Amour," few of the 19 movies she wrote and directed herself did well, not least because...