Marcel Proust's
In Search of Lost Time
is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest single work of the twentieth century. Since the original prewar translation there has been no completely new rendering of the original French. Now Viking makes Proust's masterpiece accessible to a whole new generation, beginning with Lydia Davis's new translation of the first volume,
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 famous taste of a madeleine. It also enfolds the short novel
Swann's Love
, an incomparable study of sexual jealousy, which becomes a crucial part of the vast, unfolding structure of
. The first volume of the book 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-
also stands on its own as a perfect rendering of a life in art, of the past re-created through memory.
Author Biography: Marcel Proust (1871-1922), after 1907, rarely left his Paris apartment and devoted himself to completing
. Lydia Davis is the author of four works of fiction and was named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government for her translations. Christopher Prendergast is professor of French at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of King's College.