Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust, known as Marcel Proust, was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental novel In Search of Lost Time; earlier rendered as Remembrance of Things Past. In Search of Lost Time follows the narrator's recollections of childhood and experiences into adulthood during the late 19th century to early 20th century aristocratic France, while reflecting on the loss of time and lack of meaning to the world. The novel began to take shape in 1909. Proust continued to work on it until his final illness in the autumn of 1922 forced him to break off. The first part (Swann's Way) was rejected by a number of publishers. Proust eventually arranged with the publisher Grasset to pay the cost of publication himself. When published it was advertised as the first of a three-volume novel. Swann's Way is divided into four parts: "Combray I", "Combray II", "Un Amour de Swann", and "Noms de pays: le nom". A third-person novella within Swann's Way, "Un Amour de Swann" is sometimes published as a volume by itself. Swann's Way tells two related stories, the first of which revolves around Marcel, a younger version of the narrator, and his experiences in, and memories of, the French town Combray. The famous opening paragraphs of Swann’s Way, in which the narrator describes his habit of going to bed early as a child, typify Proust’s ability to mine insight from apparently insignificant events. Enjoy free online English audiobook “Swann's Way”, the first part of In Search of Lost Time, a novel in seven volumes by Marcel Proust.
