Summer with Proust

The novel by Marcel Proust (1871–1922) In Search of Lost Time has been an unwavering challenge to readers around the world since its publication in the 1910s and 1920s. What is it: an immense cathedral of a book in the tradition of the great 19th-century novels, a panorama of the refined culture of Europe during the 'end of the belle époque,' swept away by world wars, an experience of philosophical reflection on memory through literature, an attempt by the author to understand himself, his musings on what it means to write a book and how to dare to do so, or, finally, an invitation to the reader to understand what it truly means to read a book? All of this together and much more are the subjects contemplated from various perspectives by nine readers of Proust: literary scholars, philosophers, art historians. And, of course, The Search – is a challenge for the translator, who in this book is taken up by Elena Baevskaya, who opens a fragmented but at the same time unified view of the body of texts of the outstanding French writer.