The Guermantes Way

The third volume of one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century

Mark Treharne's acclaimed new translation of The Guermantes Way will introduce a new generation of American readers to the literary richness of Marcel Proust. The third volume in Penguin Classics' superb new edition of In Search of Lost Time—the first completely new translation of Proust's masterpiece since the 1920s—brings us a more comic and lucid prose than English readers have previously been able to enjoy.

After the relative intimacy of the first two volumes of In Search of Lost Time, The Guermantes Way opens up a vast, dazzling landscape of fashionable Parisian life in the late nineteenth century, as the narrator enters the brilliant, shallow world of the literary and aristocratic salons. Both a salute to and a devastating satire of a time, place, and culture, The Guermantes Way defines the great tradition of novels that follow the initiation of a young man into the ways of the world.

“Mark Treharne catches much of the comedy, by turns black, bitter and slapstick. ( The Guardian ) Monumental ... One of the greatest of all the modern novels. (Malcolm Bradbury)”

"The latest in the adventurous and expert new edition of In Search of Lost Time ...The colloquial accents of Treharne’s lucid English version illuminate such contrasts in ways perhaps not quite managed by the stately cadences of C.K. Scott-Moncrieff’s first English translation." -- Kirkus Reviews

Marcel Proust (1871­–1922) was born in Auteuil, France. In his twenties, following a year in the army, he became a conspicuous society figure, frequenting the most fashionable Paris salons of the day. After 1899, however, his chronic asthma, the death of his parents, and his growing disillusionment with humanity caused him to lead an increasingly retired life. From 1907 on, he rarely emerged from a cork-lined room in his apartment on boulevard Haussmann. There he insulated himself against the distractions of city life and the effects of trees and flowers—though he loved them, they brought on his attacks of asthma. He slept by day and worked by night, writing letters and devoting himself to the completion of In Search of Lost Time.

Mark Treharne (translator) taught French at the University of Warwick and has since worked as a translator. His translations include the work of Philippe Jaccottet and Jacques Reda’s The Ruins of Paris.

Christopher Prendergast (series editor) is a professor emeritus of French literature at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of King’s College. 

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