This translation of the first volume of Prout's classic novel emphasizes its comic aspect, showing a Proust more sharply engaged and lucid than is generally accepted. It depicts the impressions of a sensitive boy of his family and neighbours, brought back to life by the taste of a madeleine.
The second volume of Proust's classic work is a dissection of male and female adolescence and a mediation on different forms of love, charged with the narrator's memories of Paris and the Normandy seaside, and his relationship with his grandmother and the Swann family.
The fifth volume of this classic novel contains two works dealing with the theme of the explosion and impact of memory that runs throughout "In Search of Lost Time", pointing the reader towards its resolution.
In the final volume of Proust's classic work, Marcel discovers his world destroyed by war and those he knew transformed by the march of time. The book describes the paradox of facing mortality, yet overcoming it through the act of writing.
The third volume of Proust's classic work opens up a vast, dazzling landscape of fashionable Parisian life in the late 19th century, as the narrator enters the brilliant, shallow world of the literary and aristocractic salons. The book is both salute to and satire of a time, place and culture.
The fourth volume of six, Proust's novel here takes up the theme of homosexual love - male and female - and dwells on how destructive sexual jealousy can be for those who suffer it. "Sodom and Gomorrah" is also an unforgiving analysis of the decadent high society of Paris.