PornotropicMarguerite Duras & The Colonial Illusion
Marguerite Duras’ novel ‘The Sea Wall’, published in 1950, was a subversive critique of French colonisation in its prize possession, Indochina. Comparing France’s pearl of the empire to a massive brothel, Duras showed the underside of colonisation in all its seediness, corruption, and brutality. A look back at this extraordinary autobiographical novel seventy years after its first appearance.