Marguerite Duras writes short, boundless stories. As in many of her stories, in The Man Sitting in the Corridor she starts tentatively, turning frequently to the future perfect to situate the past of her story in the future. Though disturbing and sexually provocative, there is nothing pornographic in the scenes, robbed of texture and tension by the pace and hollowness of the characters.

Much of the narrative tension in The Man Sitting in the Corridor is created by the third person, the voyeur quietly observing the sadomasochistic events from an unseen distance. The fourth person, another voyeur, is the reader left unsettled by the awful force of the story. This is late Duras at her most terse, destabilising the cold-bloodedness of pornography by stripping it bare of any erotic charge.

This edition of The Man Sitting in the Corridor is published by Foxrock Books, named after Beckett’s birthplace and founded by Barney Rosset, founder also of Grove Press which brought Beckett to Americans’ attention.