Proustian Uncertainties

“[A] haunting work…Friedländer has always imbued his scholarship with an acute literary sensibility…incisive and quizzical…[an] intimate and subtle book.” —Wall Street Journal “[A] superb new book…Friedländer, the great historian of Nazi Germany and the Jews and also the author of his own Proustian memoir, When Memory Comes, argues that Proust’s narrator is a ‘disembodied presence unlike that in any novel before,’ and that it’s the relation of that presence to Proust himself that makes the Recherche, with its biting social satire, so unique.” —Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year   “The pleasure of [Proustian Uncertainties] comes from…the author unspooling thoughts and venturing theories collected over many years about a book he clearly loves…By taking a bird’s-eye view of the novel, Friedländer notices continuities and contradictions that are hard to see from within the teeming thickets of Proust’s prose.” —Harper’s “[An] excellent volume about In Search of Lost Time and Proust himself.” —Literary Hub “[A] thought-provoking examination…[Friedländer] is a wise, enthusiastic guide to Proust.” —Kirkus Reviews “[Friedländer] meditates on the ‘extraordinary pull’ and hidden depths of Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu in this intriguing extended essay…Proust fans will enjoy these appreciative, personal peregrinations through ‘one of the most important novels ever written.’” —Publishers Weekly “[A] personal and idiosyncratic reading of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time…impressive and will certainly draw in a curious literary readership.” —Library Journal “Saul Friedländer, whose work on memory has played a critical role in filling in the lacunae of recorded history, has turned his lens on the uses of memory in Proust’s extraordinary record of time in books that remain timeless.” —Maryanne Wolf, author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain and Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World Praise for Saul Friedländer:   “Friedländer describes his experiences in lean, graceful sentences; his language seems armored against the dissolution it describes.” —New York Review of Books   “[Friedländer’s] judgments are scrupulous and levelheaded. And he treats the historical controversies that have raged around so many of the topics he covers with untiring fair-mindedness…Friedländer succeeds in binding together the many different strands of his story with a sure touch. He has written a masterpiece that will endure.” —New York Times Book Review   “[Friedländer’s] intellectual discipline may be that of the historian but his writing is animated by the passion of memory that only his generation can fully express.” —The Guardian