"Like the most illustrious women writers of the Old Regime, from Lafayette to de Stael, Duras first became celebrated for her display of intelligence and conversational brilliance in the salons and only subsequently moved from this semiprivate arena to the public literary marketplace."
Introduction by Joan DeJean, p. viii

"Against that background of controversy, we can best measure the novel's audacity. Not only was Duras's heroine brought to France after the law forbidding the country to all people of color had gone into effect; once there, Ourika proceeded to live out the very scenarios that French law had been attempting to ward off for a century and a half: she believes herself the equal of the French and even dares to fall in love with one of them."
Introduction by Joan DeJean, p. x

"As a woman living in the eighteenth century and as a young girl bought...