The 14-Minute Marcel Proust: A Very Short Guide to the Greatest Novel Ever Written

Today it's called In Search of Lost Time, though an earlier generation knew it as Remembrance of Things Past. Under whatever title, and whichever translator, Proust's gargantuan novel has challenged English-speaking readers for nearly a century.

Over the course of twelve months, Stephen Fall tackled the recent and lovely Penguin/Viking editions, blogging on the internet as he read. He devotes a short chapter to each of the novel's seven books, introducing it with a two-minute plot synopsis--thus the fourteen minutes of the title. He also ponders some of its highlights and compares the new translations with the classic ones based on the work of Charles Scott Moncrieff.

Three concluding chapters discuss Albertine, the great love of the narrator's life; Proust's service in the French army; and the 'dueling madeleines', which give a snapshot of each translator's version of a notable Proustian passage. About 20,000 words. Revised and updated May 2022.