Remembrance of Things Past, Vol. 2: The Guermantes Way / Cities of the Plain

Remembrance of Things Past, Vol. 2: The Guermantes Way / Cities of the Plain by Marcel Proust. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780394506456.

Marcel Proust (1871-1922) spent the last fourteen years of his life writing A la recherche du temps perdu. It is an intimate epic, an excavation of the self, and a comedy of manners by turns and all at once. Proust is the twentieth centurys Dante, presenting us with a unique, unsettling picture of ourselves as jealous lovers and unmitigated snobs, frittering our lives away, with only the hope of art as a possible salvation. He offers us a form of redemption for a sober and secular age. Scott Moncrieffs delightful translation was for many years the only access to Proust in English. A labour of love that took him nearly as many years as Proust spent writing the original. Moncrieffs translation strives to capture the extraordinary blend of muscular analysis with poetic reverie that typifies Prousts style. It remains a justly famous classic of translation.