Stories by Marguerite Duras stay with you. Short sentences. Sometimes harsh. Sometimes almost a whisper. But always spot on. 

She was born in 1914 in what was then French Indochina. A youth spent far away from Brussels, mixed up in colonial tension, poverty, and heat. 

Years later, she would process those memories in The Lover, her best-known novel. The book tells the story of a young girl and a forbidden love on the outskirts of Saigon. Millions of readers around the world were drawn to that one, heated story. 

Duras did not write to tell beautiful stories. She wrote to come to terms with memories, longing and loss. Her work is a constant balance between fiction and autobiography. It's often unclear what actually happened and what was made up. And that's where her strength lies. 

She did not stand on the sidelines during the Second World War either. Duras joined the French Resistance and later wrote about the fear, the waiting and the silence that war leaves behind. Writing became a way for her to preserve what would otherwise be lost. 

Today, a square in Brussels is named after her, as well as a STIB-MIVB stop. An unexpected stop for a woman who was always travelling between worlds, languages, and memories. 

Maybe it was meant to be this way for Marguerite Duras.