Simply Proust

The writer who found an entire world inside memory.

Marcel Proust spent thousands of pages exploring something that happens to all of us: a moment from the past suddenly returns, bringing with it people, places, feelings, and a world we thought was gone. In Simply Proust, Jack Jordan offers an accessible introduction to the life and work of one of the twentieth century's greatest novelists. Jordan guides readers through Proust's monumental In Search of Lost Time, explaining its recurring themes of memory, love, jealousy, art, society, time, and the strange ways people remember their lives. He also introduces the characters and social world that populate Proust's fiction, from Parisian salons and aristocratic circles to the intimate relationships that shape his narrator's understanding of himself and others. Rather than treating Proust as an author who must be approached with reverence, Simply Proust shows why his observations of love, vanity, friendship, ambition, and memory remain so recognizable.