The Easy Life

NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITOR’S CHOICE PICK

For the first time in English, literary icon Marguerite Duras’s foundational masterpiece about a young woman’s existential breakdown in the deceptively peaceful French countryside.

Marguerite Duras was one of France’s most important and prolific writers. Born Marguerite Donnadieu in 1914 in what was then French Indochina, she went to Paris in 1931 to study at the Sorbonne. During WWII she was active in the Resistance, and in 1945 she joined the Communist Party. Duras wrote many novels, plays, films, and essays during her lifetime. She is perhaps best known for her internationally bestselling novel The Lover, which won the Prix Goncourt in 1984. She died in Paris in 1996.

Emma Ramadan is a literary translator of poetry and prose from France, North Africa, and the Middle East. She is the recipient of a Fulbright, an NEA Translation Fellowship, the 2018 Albertine Prize and the 2020 PEN Translation Prize. She is based in Providence, Rhode Island where she is also the co-owner of Riffraff bookstore and bar.

Olivia Baes is a Franco-American multidisciplinary artist who grew up between France, Catalonia, and the United States. She holds a Master of the Arts in Cultural Translation from the American University of Paris.