The Way by Swann's (In Search of Lost Time, Volume 1)

By Marcel Proust

Book Overview

One of the greatest, most entertaining reading experiences in any language, Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time Vol. 1: The Way by Swann's is published in a new translation from the French by Lydia Davis in Penguin Classics.

The Way by Swann's is one of the great novels of childhood, depicting the impressions of a sensitive boy of his family and neighbours, brought dazzlingly back to life by the famous taste of a madeleine. It contains the separate short novel, A Love of Swann's, a study of sexual jealousy that forms a crucial part of the vast, unfolding structure of In Search of Lost Time. This book established Proust as one of the greatest voices of the modern age - satirical, sceptical, confiding and endlessly varied in his responses to the human condition.

Since the original pre-war translation Remembrance of Things Past by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, there has been no completely new rendering of Proust's French original into English. This translation brings to the fore a more sharply engaged, comic and lucid Proust. As the great story unfolds from its magical opening scenes to its devastating end, it is this Penguin Classics edition of In Search of Lost Time that makes Proust accessible to a new generation.

Marcel Proust (1871-1922) is generally viewed as the greatest French novelist and perhaps the greatest European novelist of the 20th century. He lived much of his later life as a reclusive semi-invalid in a sound-proofed flat in Paris, giving himself over entirely to writing his masterpiece In Search of Lost Time ( la recherche du temps perdu).

If you enjoyed In Search Of Lost Time, you might like James Joyce's Ulysses, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.

'The latest Penguin Proust is a triumph, and will bring this inexhaustible artwork to new audiences throughout the English-speaking world'
Sunday Telegraph

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0141180315
• ISBN13: 9780141180311
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: Penguin Classic
• Length: 496 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.8" x 0.8" x 5.1"

Customer Reviews

At last! A readable copy.

This is not a literary review (We all know what Swann's Way is about), but my way of expressing relief that at last I have a readable copy of it. Out goes my old Folio paperback with its miniscule print -- Hooray!

Proust the Yenta

When I first read this novel 35 years ago, I found a button in a head shop that read, "PROUST IS A YENTA." It's true. Proust is, underneath all the vivid and evocative prose, a fellow who loves to dish the dirt, and the more sordid the better. Poor Swann! In love with a two-timing hussy who takes him for all he's worth and alienates all his haute-bourgeois friends in the process. Amazing the lengths Proust goes to to tell this simple tale! No metaphorical stone goes unturned (as it were), no perfervid phrase unused, no nuance of ratiocinated feeling unnoticed. If you are a Proust neophyte, understand that single sentences sometimes go on for more than a page and that paragraphs often take multiple pages to unfold -- that every diamond has infinite facets and all are examined. Only late Henry James rivals Proust in the complexity of his sentence sructures which seek to eke out the essence of the quintessence of feelings. The effete narrator (for truly he defines the word "effete") spends the first 150 pages of the novel dissecting nostalgia for his childhood. Only after these rarified ramblings does he deign to tell us poor Swann's story! Well, no one reads Proust for the tales. Either you'll think he's the greatest stylist of any language ever, or you'll stop reading after the first page. You may need a large dose of Elmore Leonard after reading Proust just to cleanse the palate! Still, there's nothing quite like it.