Here we get the final look at the salon, which neatly pulls all the themes of the book together in a most sadly humorous way. Then we get the final 100 or so pages, a section which is often called the 'Bal de tetes' by critics, but which I affectionately call the 'Night of the Living Dead' (okay, it takes place in the afternoon). Our narrator comes up with his 'mission statement' about halfway through, although his epiphany is undercut by the usual overly verbose analysis. Since much of it was written much earlier, he could have worked out most of its textual issues still, it contains errors in it (as described in specific endnotes). 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.ĭespite not being subject to a final edit (Proust died before he might have done so), this volume is a definite rebound from the boring 'Captive' and 'Fugitive' volumes. 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. 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. 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. But since its original prewar translation there has been no completely new version in English. 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. The first volume of one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, in Lydia Davis's award-winning translation

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