Novel · 1913–1927
In Search of Lost Time
Marcel Proust
Aya Saleh · Ink & Ivy
Novel · 1913–1927 · French · Modern
In Search of Lost Time
Seven volumes on how the past is recovered, and by what accidents.
Reading edition
An authorized English PDF is not yet included for this work. The source links below offer edition searches; access and borrowing availability vary.
How to read it
Involuntary memory is Proust's engine, but jealousy is his laboratory: love examined as an epistemological problem you can never solve.
Selected section overview
These are selected acts, parts or episodes, not a complete chapter list. Summaries contain spoilers; descriptive headings are editorial.
Swann's WayCombray and Swann in love
The madeleine; the goodnight kiss; Swann's jealousy as a rehearsal of the narrator's own.
In the Shadow of Young Girls in FlowerBalbec
Adolescence, Albertine, and the discovery that anticipation exceeds arrival.
The Guermantes WaySociety
The salon anatomised; the grandmother's death rendered with clinical tenderness.
Sodom and GomorrahConcealment
Desire under social camouflage; the novel's widest sociological sweep.
The Prisoner / The FugitiveAlbertine
Possession as torture; grief that arrives out of sequence.
Time RegainedThe uneven paving stone
The vocation understood at last: the book we have been reading is the one he is about to write.
