La passion suspendue. Entretiens avec Léopoldina Pallotta della Torre is a volume of transcribed interviews with Marguerite Duras. The interviews have been edited for clarity of text, and questions are grouped in thematic chapters or sections. There are such sections as "Childhood", "The Years in Paris", "A Career in Writing", "Text Analysis", "Literature", "Criticism", "The Cinema", "The Theatre" and "Places" (to name most, but not all).

The formulation of some of the questions seems long and convoluted, while some of the answers of Duras seem short. It is not clear whether questions belonging to a section were drawn together from multiple sessions of whether they occurred in this order during one long interview.

Although a lot can be learnt about Marguerite Duras from this book, it was not altogether pleasant reading, a bit heavy handed. Perhaps Duras was not so interested in all these questions. Les lieux de Marguerite Duras, which is also referred to in this book, is much more readable. In the introduction by the translator it is also said that some of the finesses of expression may have been lost in re-translation. While the original interviews were conducted in French, the book was first published in Italian in 1989, and then translated back into French. ( )