The Man Sitting in the Corridor

One of France’s leading literary figures, Marguerite Duras casts a brooding, elegant spell over her readers with her acute portrayals of love: its aphrodisiacal powers and its sweet, inevitable pain. This novella is haunting, erotic, and tragic, with the distinctive evocation that is Duras’ own.

“Ms. Duras’s 1980 novella, “The Man Sitting in the Corridor,” whose superb English translation by Barbara Bray is only now appearing, was […] an exercise in the author’s progressive distillation of her prose. Here it is so spare that at most several sentences (and once a mere 15 words) occupy an entire page. Thus unencumbered, the rare bits of writing gain resonance, like a lone voice echoing through a tunnel. Moreover, by writing less — and thereby suggesting more — Ms. Duras invests her information with a power unavailable to more copious, if still evocative, forms of literary expression.” – Ginger Danto, The New York Times