Swanns Way, Marcel Proust
Swanns Way, Marcel Proust
List: $23.49 | Sale: $16.45
Club: $11.74

Swann's Way

Author: Marcel Proust

Narrator: Simon Vance

Unabridged: 17 hr 26 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/29/2010

Categories: Fiction, Classic

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

Swann's Way is the first novel of Marcel Proust's seven-volume magnum opus In Search of Lost Time. Following the narrator's opening ruminations about the nature of sleep is one of twentieth-century literature's most famous scenes: the eating of the madeleine soaked in a "decoction of lime-flowers," the associative act from which the remainder of the narrative unfurls. After elaborate reminiscences about his childhood with relatives in rural Combray and in urban Paris, Proust's narrator recalls a story regarding Charles Swann, a major figure in his Combray childhood, and his escapades in nineteenth-century privileged Parisian society, revolving around his obsessive love for young socialite Odette de Crécy.

Filled with searing, insightful, and humorous criticisms of French society, this novel showcases Proust's innovative prose style. With narration that alternates between first and third person, Swann's Way unconventionally introduces Proust's recurring themes of memory, love, art, and the human experience—and for nearly a century, audiences have deliciously savored each moment.

About Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust (1871-1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental In Search of Lost Time, which was published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927. His writings were published in numerous literary magazines, including Le Mensuel and La Revue Blanche, and he also authored the posthumously published Jean Santeuil.


Reviews

Goodreads review by s.penkevich on March 27, 2025

'reality will take shape in the memory alone...’ For 100 years now, Swann’s Way, the first volume of Marcel Proust’s masterpiece, has engaged and enchanted readers. Within moments of turning back the cover and dropping your eyes into the trenches of text, the reader is sent to soaring heights of rapt......more

Goodreads review by Vit on July 13, 2023

Marcel Proust is a weaver – he weaves his narration from memories of the past, dreams and threads of irony… A sleeping man holds in a circle around him the sequence of the hours, the order of the years and worlds. He consults them instinctively as he wakes and reads in a second the point on the earth......more

Goodreads review by Ahmad on August 02, 2021

(Book 685 from 1001 books) - Du Côté de Chez Swann = Swann's Way (À La Recherche du Temps Perdu = In Search of Lost Time #1), Marcel Proust Writing about this series of novels should be a separate book in itself. You do not know where to start, as if you want to depict the pyramids of Egypt stone by......more

Goodreads review by Jim on April 02, 2023

[Edited 4/2/23] Proust! Memories! Almost 5,000 reviews so I thought I would simply give examples of his writing if you have not read him before. Beautiful writing, lyrical, complex, maybe even occasionally convoluted. First the famous passage about madeleines: “And suddenly the memory revealed itself.......more

Goodreads review by Jeffrey on August 24, 2018

”At the hour when I usually went downstairs to find out what there was for dinner...I would stop by the table, where the kitchen-maid had shelled them, to inspect the platoons of peas, drawn up in ranks and numbered, like little green marbles, ready for a game; but what most enraptured me were the a......more