In this classic novel by the best-selling author of The Lover, the erotic intrigues among a quartet of two women and two men mask a chillingly deceptive form of madness. Elisabeth Alione is convalescing in a hotel in rural France when she meets two men and another woman. The sophisticated dalliance among the four serves to obscure an underlying violence, which, when the curtain of civilization is drawn aside, reveals in her fellow guests a very contemporary—perhaps even new—form of insanity.

Like many of Duras's novels, Destroy, She Said owes much to cinema, displaying a skillful interplay of dialogue and description. There are recurring moods and motifs from the Duras repertory: eroticism, lassitude, stifled desire, a beautiful woman, a mysterious forest, a desolate provincial hotel.

Marguerite Duras directed the film made from this novel, which the London Times called "a very extraordinary achievement." The film and the book together are the subject of a probing, in-depth interview with Duras by the well-known director Jacques Rivette and by Jean Narboni included in this volume.