Marguerite Duras has been one of the most popular and widely read writers not only in France, but throughout the reading world for almost half a century. “The colors of the East and the problems of the West, the intensity of emotions and the coldness of loneliness - these are the poles that create tension in the prose of this famous writer.” In the “Western” novels of Duras of the early period - “Moderato Cantabile” and “Summer Evening, Half Past Ten” - love is closely intertwined with death, and murders are variations on a theme formulated by Oscar Wilde: the lover always kills the one he loves. The novel “Moderato Cantabile” is also familiar to Russian readers from the film adaptation made in 1960 by Peter Brook with Jeanne Moreau and Jean-Paul Belmondo in the lead roles.