In Search of Marcel Proust

by Marcel Proust, translated by Lydia Davis

The first volume of Proust's epic introduces many of the novel's major characters. Early in the book, with the assistance of the aforementioned baked goods, the narrator recalls his childhood in Combray in the French countryside. The second half of the novel, sometimes excerpted and published separately as Swann in Love, is the story of Charles Swann, the narrator's neighbor in Combray, and his complicated, neurotic love affair with Odette de Crécy—a woman in whom he initially takes little interest but who soon comes to dominate his life. Davis's translation, which inaugurated the Penguin Deluxe Classics edition of In Search of Lost Time in 2003, is a great place to start.

by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff, edited and annotated by William C. Carter

The first English translation of Proust's great novel—by C.K. Scott Moncrieff—was originally published under the umbrella title Remembrance of Things Past, a phrase Moncrieff borrowed from Shakespeare. Over time, however, both scholars and general readers alike have come to prefer the more literal In Search of Lost Time. Moncrieff's translation has real flair and a great feeling for the period, even if he at times plays fast and loose with Proust's original. Good for readers who want to stick with the same translator throughout. (Or mostly... Translation of the final volume was completed after Moncrieff's death.)

by Marcel Proust, adaptation and drawings by Stéphane Heuet, translated by Arthur Goldhammer

For readers seeking a different path for their Proustian journey, Stéphane Heuet's acclaimed graphic-novel version is an imaginative and lavishly detailed translation of the Search into pictorial form.

by Alain de Botton

One of the best-known books about Proust is Alain de Botton's friendly, approachable take on the author's potential as a self-help guru. Merging biography and advice, this slim volume is a great introduction to Proust's worldview and will give readers new to the Search a good sense of what they can expect to get out of it.

by Christopher Prendergast

Published in 2022, a century after Proust's death, Prendergast's study is a brilliant close reading of the Search, probably most appropriate for readers already familiar with the novel. Taking a thematic approach, Prendergast—who was the general editor of the Penguin Deluxe Classics edition—comes at the text from a range of unexpected angles, examining, among other things, insomnia, digestion, color, breathing, and music in Proust.

by Richard Davenport-Hines

In May 1922, six months to the day before he died, Proust met James Joyce at a party thrown by friends that was also attended by Picasso, Stravinsky, and Diaghilev. This legendary evening is examined at length in this dazzling biographical work. Davenport-Hines finds humor and a wealth of fascinating detail in Proust's life, especially in his final months, as he raced to complete his novel.

by George D. Painter

"I shall show that it is possible to identify and reconstruct from ample evidence the sources in Proust's real life for all major, and many minor characters, events and places in his novel," wrote Painter in one of the earliest major biographies of the writer. While his inspiration-hunting approach to reading the Search has been swerved by many biographers since, including the great French Proustian Jean-Yves Tadié, Painter's highly readable prose vividly captures Marcel's day-to-day. Biography is illuminating however you look at it, for as Painter says, "What do they know of À la Recherche who only À la Recherche know?"

by Edmund White

This short biography by the novelist Edmund White is of particular interest for its exploration of Proust's early loves and homosexuality—as well as their contributions to the psyche of a man who would create some of literature's greatest doomed love affairs.

by Benjamin Taylor

"The Jews of the Search are of every moral stripe and—glory of the novel—of stripes that change," writes Taylor in his highly engaging biography of Proust for the Jewish Lives series. While he was raised Catholic and wasn't actively religious, Proust's mother's Judaism had a significant effect on his thinking and on the direction of his novel, especially in its treatment of the Dreyfus Affair, a political scandal that divided France for over a decade after a military officer of Jewish descent was falsely convicted of treason.

by Caroline Weber

Though the Search is definitively a work of fiction, there are certainly significant correspondences between the material of Proust's life—and the lives of his friends and acquaintances—and the content of his novel. In Proust's Duchess, Caroline Weber looks at the influence of three real-life icons of the Belle Époque and their influence on the character of the Duchesse de Guermantes.

by Lorenza Foschini, translated by Eric Karpeles

This slim volume is a fun, whimsical, short biography of Jacques Guérin, a parfumier who becomes obsessed with collecting Proust's personal effects.

by Lydia Davis

Davis’s detailed, absorbing essays on the distinctive challenges and rewards of translating Proust, down to whether a single word—boule—is a loaf of bread or a hot-water bottle offer fascinating insights into the author's distinctive language and ways of thinking.

by Anka Muhlstein

Some of the subtlest effects of the Search depend on a certain amount of knowledge of other books, not least works by the great letter-writer Madame de Sévigné, the novelist George Sand, and the diplomat and author François-René de Chateaubriand. Muhlstein's short book offers a fascinating primer on the books that Proust's characters are reading.

directed by Volker Schlöndorff

Starring Jeremy Irons as Charles Swann and Alain Delon as the Baron de Charlus, Schlöndorff's adaptation from 1984 wisely narrows the narrative focus to the neurotic affair between Swann and Odette. In French with English subtitles.

directed by Raúl Ruiz

Featuring a star turn by Catherine Deneuve as Odette and a surprise appearance by John Malkovich as the Baron de Charlus, Ruiz's ambitious retelling of the Search is a story-hopping symphonic rendition of Proust with sumptuous visuals and some remarkable technical effects. Well worth a watch once you've finished Volume 7.