Swann's Way

By Marcel Proust

Book Overview

The first volume of one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, in Lydia Davis's award-winning translation

Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century. But since its original prewar translation there has been no completely new version in English. Now, Penguin Classics brings Proust's masterpiece to new audiences throughout the world, beginning with Lydia Davis's internationally acclaimed translation of the first volume, Swann's Way.

Swann's Way is one of the preeminent novels of childhood: a sensitive boy's impressions of his family and neighbors, all brought dazzlingly back to life years later by the taste of a madeleine. It also enfolds the short novel "Swann in Love," an incomparable study of sexual jealousy that becomes a crucial part of the vast, unfolding structure of In Search of Lost Time. The first volume of the work that established Proust as one of the finest voices of the modern age--satirical, skeptical, confiding, and endlessly varied in his response to the human condition--Swann's Way also stands on its own as a perfect rendering of a life in art, of the past recreated through memory.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0142437964
• ISBN13: 9780142437964
• Release Date: November 2004
• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Length: 468 Pages
• Weight: 1.22 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 5.6" x 8.4"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

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.