In Search of Lost Time

In Search of Lost Time (a translation of the original À la recherche du temps perdu) is a 3,000+ page novel in seven books (recently published in six volumes), by French writer Marcel Proust, originally published between 1913 and 1927.

Publishing history

The original work was published in several volumes between 1913 and 1927, the last few posthumously and without the final corrections and revisions that Proust left unfinished at the time of his death. Rather than recount a clear sequence of events, Proust focuses on the narrator's memories (which are semi-autobiographical) and the connections between them.

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À la recherche du temps perdu consists of seven volumes, although different editions split the work in different ways:

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• Du côté de chez Swann (1913)
• À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (1919, awarded the 1919 Prix Goncourt).
• Le côté de Guermantes (1922)
• Sodome et Gomorrhe (1922)
• La prisonnière (1923)
• La fugitive (1925, published as Albertine disparue because another book with a similar title was published around the same time)
• Le temps retrouvé (Time Regained) (1927)

Un Amour de Swann, part two of Du côté de chez Swann, is often published as a volume by itself. As it forms the self-contained story of Charles Swann's love affair with Odette de Crécy and is relatively short, it is generally considered a good introduction to the work and is often a set text in French schools.

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