In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust - Viking's New Translations - 4 Volumes

Only 1 left in stock

Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest single work of the twentieth century. Since the original prewar translation there has been no completely new rendering of the original French. Now Viking makes Proust's masterpiece accessible to a whole new generation, beginning with Lydia Davis's new translation of the first volume, Swann's Way

Swann's Way by Marcel Proust : A New Translation by Lydia Davis - Hardcover FIRST EDITION/First Printing

Swann's Way is one of the preeminent novels of childhood-a sensitive boy's impressions of his family and neighbors, all brought dazzlingly back to life years later by the famous taste of a madeleine. It also enfolds the short novel Swann's Love, an incomparable study of sexual jealousy, which becomes a crucial part of the vast, unfolding structure of In Search of Lost Time. The first volume of the book that established Proust as one of the finest voices of the modern age-satirical, skeptical, confiding, and endlessly varied in his response to the human condition-Swann's Way also stands on its own as a perfect rendering of a life in art, of the past re-created through memory.

From Publishers Weekly

Relax: it's fantastic. There's no question that Davis's American English is thinner and more literal than C.K. Scott Montcrieff's archaically inflected turns of phrase and idioms, at least as revised by Terence Kilmartin and later by D.J. Enright. The removal of some of the familiar layers of the past in this all-new translation gives one a feeling similar to that of encountering an old master painting that has just been cleaned: the colors seem sharper and momentarily disorienting. Yet many readers will find it exhilarating, allowing the text to shed slight airs that were not quite Proust's and making many of the jokes much more immediate (as when he implies that sense-organ atrophy in the bourgeois is a defense mechanism and the result of hardening unarticulated feelings). As accomplished translator and novelist Davis (The End of the Story) notes in her foreword, she has followed Proust's sentence structure as closely as possible "in its every aspect," including punctuation, word order and word choice. To take just one case, where Montcrieff/Kilmartin describe Mlle. Vinteuil finding it pleasant to metaphorically "sojourn" in sadism, Davis has the much more definitive "emigrate." Proust's psychological inquiry generally feels much sharper, giving a much more palpable sense of Freud and Bergson-and of the young Marcel's willful (if not malefic) manipulations of those around him. For first-timers who don't have French and are allergic to the slightest whiff of euphemism, this is the best means for traveling the way by Swann's.--Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower by Marcel Proust : A New Translation by James Grieve - Hardcover FIRST EDITION/First Printing

A definitive new translation of the second volume of In Search of Lost Time captures the intricacies and challenges of male and female adolescence and awakening love, based on the narrator's reminiscences about Paris and the Normandy coast. 17,500 first printing.

"A triumph . . . will bring this inexhaustible artwork to new audiences throughout the English-speaking world." -- Malcolm Bowie, Sunday Telegraph (London)

The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust : A New Translation by Mark Treharne - Hardcover FIRST EDITION/First Printing

A new translation of the esteemed twentieth-century French writer's work on fashionable Parisian life in the late nineteenth century takes readers into the vivid and shallow sides of the period's literary and aristocratic salons, where a young man is initiated into the insidious ways of the world. 17,500 first printing.

Sodom and Gomorrah by Marcel Proust : A New Translation by John Sturrock - Hardcover FIRST EDITION/First Printing

Set against the backdrop of decadent Parisian high society and the rise of a conservative bourgeoisie that will supplant it, an all-new translation of the fourth volume in In Search of Lost Time explores the theme of homosexual love and the destructive influence of sexual jealousy.

"Poetic, even transcendant . . . John Sturrock is pitch-perfectÂ… equally at home with its intimacies and its bitter comedy."--Frank Wynne, The Irish Times


  • $1250.00
Qty:  
  • Weight
    7.95 lbs
  • SKU
    9780670032457

These are the best-ever translations of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time; however, they are long out-of-print and difficult to find, because of a change in United States copyright law that occurred in the middle of production.

This sale includes all four volumes released by Viking in the United States in hardcover.  These books are in brand new condition and are from the first (and only) print run of 17,500.  An excellent gift for lover's of literature.

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