One of the greatest, most entertaining reading experiences in any language, Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time Vol. 1: The Way by Swann's is published in a new translation from the French by Lydia Davis in Penguin Classics. The Way by Swann's is one of the great novels of childhood, depicting the impressions of a sensitive boy of his family and neighbours, brought dazzlingly back to life by the famous taste of a madeleine . It contains the separate short novel, A Love of Swann's , a study of sexual jealousy that forms a crucial part of the vast, unfolding structure of In Search of Lost Time . This book established Proust as one of the greatest voices of the modern age - satirical, sceptical, confiding and endlessly varied in his responses to the human condition. Since the original pre-war translation Remembrance of Things Past by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, there has been no completely new rendering of Proust's French original into English. This translation brings to the fore a more sharply engaged, comic and lucid Proust. As the great story unfolds from its magical opening scenes to its devastating end, it is this Penguin Classics edition of In Search of Lost Time that makes Proust accessible to a new generation. Marcel Proust (1871-1922) is generally viewed as the greatest French novelist and perhaps the greatest European novelist of the 20th century. He lived much of his later life as a reclusive semi-invalid in a sound-proofed flat in Paris, giving himself over entirely to writing his masterpiece In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu) . If you enjoyed In Search Of Lost Time , you might like James Joyce's Ulysses , also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 'The latest Penguin Proust is a triumph, and will bring this inexhaustible artwork to new audiences throughout the English-speaking world' Sunday Telegraph

'In Search of Lost Time' is Proust's masterpiece and was described by Somerset Maugham as the greatest novel of the 20th century. This translation brings to the fore a more sharply engaged, comic and lucid Proust. In Search of Lost Time is one of the greatest, most entertaining reading experiences in any language. As the great story unfolds from its magical opening scenes to its devastating end, it is this text that makes Proust accessible to a new generation.

This wonderful collection of Marcel Proust's Letters, selected and translated by Mina Curtiss, is both a revelatory introduction to the great writer and a treasure trove for those readers more familiar with "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu". Mina Curtiss especially chose them as apt illustrations of Proust's growing sensibility and intellectual power during the gestation of the novel. Indeed, many of the characters in the book are drawn from the men and women we meet here. The letters are also exciting as an unfolding panorama of the Belle Epoque and for their superb insights into literature, art and music. Published by Helen Marx Books and Books & Co.