In Search of Lost Time: Swann''s Way: A Graphic Novel

With its sweeping digressions into the past and reflections on the nature of memory, Prousts oceanic novel In Search of Lost Time looms over twentieth-century literature as one of the greatest, yet most endlessly challenging, literary experiences. Influencing writers like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, and even anticipating Albert Einstein in its philosophical explorations of space and time, In Search of Lost Time is a monumental achievement and reading it is a rite of passage for any serious lover of literature.

Now, in what renowned translator Arthur Goldhammer says might be likened to a piano reduction of an orchestral score, the French illustrator Stéphane Heuet re-presents Proust in graphic form for anyone who has always dreamed of reading him but was put off by the sheer magnitude of the undertaking. This New York Times best-selling graphic adaptation reveals the fundamental architecture of Prousts work while displaying a remarkable fidelity to his language as well as the novels themes of time, art, and the elusiveness of memory. As Goldhammer writes in his introduction, The reader new to Proust must attend closely, even in this compressed rendering, to the novels circling rhythms and abrupt cross-cuts between different places and times. But this necessary attentiveness is abetted and facilitated by the compactness of the graphic format.

In this first volume, Swanns Way, the narrator Marcel, an aspiring writer, recalls his childhood whenin a now-immortal moment in literaturethe taste of a madeleine cake dipped in tea unleashes a torrent of memories about his familys country home in the town of Combray. Here, Heuet and Goldhammer use Prousts own famously rich and labyrinthine sentences and discerning observations to render Combray like never before. From the water lilies of the Vivonne to the steeple and stained glass of the town church, Prousts language provides the blueprint for Heuets illustrations. Heuet and Goldhammer also capture Prousts humor, wit, and sometimes scathing portrayals of Combrays many memorable inhabitants, like the lovelorn Charles Swann and the object of his affection and torment, Odette de Crécy; Swanns daughter, Gilberte; local aristocrat the Duchesse de Guermantes; the narrators uncle Adolphe; and the hypochondriac Aunt Léonie.

Including a Proust family tree, a glossary of terms, and a map of Paris, this graphic adaptation is a surprising and useful companion piece to Prousts masterpiece for both the initiated and those seeking an introduction.