L’Amante Anglaise

Marguerite Duras’s writing adventure is, in a way, a reflection of her intellectual and political development. This novel called “The English Mint” can be considered as one of the products of the “Existentialist” period, which is the second period of Duras’s writing adventure. The work contains the most distinctive literary and intellectual characteristics of this period with its subject and fiction. A murder occurs in Viorne, near Paris. The body of the murdered person is dismembered, the pieces are thrown into the wagons of passing trains, thus scattered throughout France. All parts of the body, except the severed head, were found and brought together in Paris, and it turned out that the body belonged to a woman. Meanwhile, in Viorne, Claire Lannes appears and says that she committed the murder, surprising everyone. The reader, who reads the novel written in the form of mutual conversations, seems to actively contribute to its formation. The basic theme of the novel is lack of communication; Marguerite Duras has handled the unhealthy relationship of the person with the deaf and insensitive society in which they live, and with people who are well compatible with the social order, and the disbelief in humanity and society, in a flawless fiction, with her usual mastery.