Within a Budding Grove

Published in 1913, Swann's Way is the first of the seven parts of Marcel Proust's masterpiece, Remembrance of Things Past, one of the major achievements of twentieth-century literature. The narrator discovers that an involuntary memory triggered by some casual action - say, eating a madeleine cake or stooping to remove one's shoe - has the power to recover large areas of the past; and he sets out to resurrect his past life and the people and places that most affected him. Swann's Way, which is offered here in the celebrated translation by C. K. Scott Moncrieff, focuses particularly on Charles Swann and his love for Odette.