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  • Published: 10 January 1997
  • ISBN: 9780099362319
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 656
  • RRP: $29.99

In Search Of Lost Time, Vol 2

Within a Budding Grove




The definitive translation of the greatest French novel of the twentieth century

THE ACCLAIMED FULLY REVISED EDITION OF THE SCOTT MONCRIEFF AND KILMARTIN TRANSLATION

Within a Budding Grove describes the first shoots of an astonishing love affair. When Proust's adolescent narrator travels from Paris to the sunny seaside town of Balbec he meets an intriguing set of new acquaintances who provide him with both friendship and entertainment. Most significantly of all he meets a dark-haired girl with sparkling eyes and a tiny beauty spot on her chin: the mysterious Albertine, who will become the great love of his life.

  • Published: 10 January 1997
  • ISBN: 9780099362319
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 656
  • RRP: $29.99

About the author

Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust was born in Auteuil in 1871. In his twenties he became a conspicuous society figure, frequenting the most fashionable Paris salons of the day. After 1899, however, his suffering from chronic asthma, the death of his parents and his growing disillusionment with humanity caused him to lead an increasingly retired life. He slept by day and worked by night, writing letters and devoting himself to the completion of A la recherche du temps perdu. He died in 1922 before publication of the last three volumes of his great work.

Marcel Proust was born in Auteuil in 1871. His father, an eminent Professor of Medicine, was Roman Catholic and his mother was Jewish, factors that were to play an important role in his life and work. He was a brilliant, very literary schoolboy, and later a half-hearted student of law and political science. In his twenties he became an assiduous society figure, frequenting the most fashionable Paris salons of the day. During this period he published a volume of sketches and stories, Les Plaisirs et le jours, and between 1895 and 1900 wrote a novel, Jean Santeuil, which was in many ways a first draft for his masterpiece À la recherche du temps perdu. After 1899 his chronic asthma, the death of his parents and his growing impatience with society caused him to lead an increasingly retired life.

In the early 1900s he produced celebrated literary pastiches and translations of Ruskin, The Bible of Amiens and Sesame and Lilies and it was during this period that he wrote Contre Sainte-Beuve, although it was not published until 1954. From 1907, he rarely emerged from a sound-proofed room in his apartment on the Boulevard Hausmann in Paris, in order to insulate himself against the distractions of city life as well as the effect of the trees and flowers which he loved but which brought on his attacks of asthma. He slept by day and worked by night, writing letters and devoting himself to the completion of À la recherche du temps perdu. He died in 1922 before the publication of the last three books of his great work. With À la recherche du temps perdu Proust attempted the perfect rendering of life in art, of the past recreated through memory. It is both a portrait of the artist and a discovery of the aesthetic by which the portrait is painted, and it was to have an immense influence on the literature of the twentieth century.

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Praise for In Search Of Lost Time, Vol 2

Scott Moncrieff's translation was rather like swimming through syrup...Kilmartin and Enright have produced a version that wonderfully proves the greatness of this novel, this novelist. The prose that describes Swann's sexual obsession, for instance, is so good you have to stop after many a paragraph, re-read, think over it

Melvyn Bragg, Guardian

What a genius! Whole pages cascade, like great jazz slaloms

Bill Nighy, The Times

One of the cornerstones of the Western literary canon

The Times

Surely the greatest novelist of the 20th century

Sunday Telegraph

As close to being a definitive English version of the great novel as we are likely to get. This new edition will serve to introduce new generations of readers to what Somerset Maugham rightly described as the greatest novel of our century

Allan Massie, Scotsman