The Easy Life

For the first time in English, from the literary icon and author of the classic novel The Lover, Marguerite Duras's foundational masterpiece about a young woman's existential breakdown in the deceptively peaceful French countryside.

The Easy Life is the story of Francine Veyrenattes, a twenty-five-year-old woman who already feels like life is passing her by. Existence on her family farm is routine, mundane. But when she learns her uncle is having an affair with her brother's wife, she decides to bring the secret out into the open and shatter the seeming tranquility of their lives. Tragedy ensues, as Francine expected, but even amidst her grief, she continues to experience a curious detachment, an inability to navigate the world as others do. Hoping to be cleansed of what ails her, she travels to the coast to visit the sea, where she finds herself fully unraveling. Lying in the sun with her toes in the sand by day and psychologically dissolving in her hotel room by night, soon her inner crisis reaches its peak and she must grapple with whether to take hold of her own existence, or instead to surrender to the easy life.

An extraordinary examination of a young woman's estrangement from the world that only Marguerite Duras could have written, The Easy Life is a work of unsettling beauty and insight, and a bold, spellbinding journey into the depths of the human heart.

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.