Easy Life, The

Description: 'One of the 20th century's greatest thinkers and prose stylists' New York Times 'A novel of the disquieting contours of family, and of the mind, and of life unceasing even in the midst of death by one of the most important, visionary writers of all time' Amina Cain, author of Indelicacy WITH A FOREWORD BY KATE ZAMBRENO There's nothing to do about boredom, I'm bored, but one day I won't be bored anymore. Soon I'll know that it's not even worth the trouble. We'll have the easy life. Twenty-five-year-old Francine Veyrenattes, confined to the family farm, already feels that life is passing her by. But after Francine lets slip a terrible secret, culminating in the violent deaths of her brother and uncle, her world is shattered. Fleeing the farm for the seaside, Francine finds herself disintegrating. Lying in the sun with her toes in the sand, she restlessly wishes for things to be somehow easier, to have a life worth living. But then the calm and quiet is broken yet again - by another tragedy and a senseless death, in which Francine finds herself implicated. Cast out of paradise, and stranded between her home and the rest of the world, she must confront her rapidly dissolving sense of self if she is to find a way to survive. 'It's a masterpiece, and a little known, if not unknown, masterpiece ... Any serious reader of this author's work must begin with this novel' YVES BERGER

Review: Reading The Easy Life, there is a sense of riding on the edge of a dark wave, a brilliant intensity only Marguerite Duras could bring into existence. A novel of the disquieting contours of family, and of the mind, and of life unceasing even in the midst of death. How exhilarating to be able to encounter Francine Veyrenattes, a character I won't forget, and for the first time in English, this early work by one of the most important, visionary writers of all time -- AMINA CAIN
Eight decades on, Duras's nascent talent is on display here * GUARDIAN *
Full of desolation and longing ... Sit with the ennui and you may find moments of intense clarity * NEW STATESMAN *
Chilly, introspective, told with barely any dialogue, yet shaped by white-hot melodrama, it's a bracing, uncanny reading experience * DAILY MAIL *
Simultaneously grotesque, beautiful and tragic * DAILY TELEGRAPH *
In this powerful, immaculately translated novel, we watch the young Marguerite Duras move from the fierce, iron rigors of narrative to her more characteristic style of relentless introspection. This book, which she wrote in her twenties, already reveals all her powers -- EDMUND WHITE
Praise for Marguerite Duras: By turns ardent, raging, sensual and embittered ... A dreamlike, savage world, in which the great themes of love, war and death found their most recklessly impassioned chronicler * Observer *
A writer who believed that understanding suffering was an act of the imagination * New Yorker *
Very beautiful, highly intelligent, enjoyable and original * Sunday Times *



Author Biography: 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.