How Proust Can Change Your Life (Unabridged)
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
A self-help book like few others.
For anyone who ever wondered what Marcel Proust had in mind when he wrote the one-and-a-quarter-million words of In Search of Lost Time (while bedridden no less), Alain de Botton has the answer. For, in this stylish, erudite and frequently hilarious book, de Botton dips deeply into Proust’s life and work - his fiction, letter, and conversations - and distils from them that rare self-help manual: one that is actually helpful.
Here, tendered in prose almost as luminous as it’s subject’s, is advice on cultivating friendships, suffering successfully, recognising love and understanding why you should never sleep with someone on the first date. And here, too, is a generously perceptive literary biography that suggests that the master is as relevant today as he was in fin de siècle Paris.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Marcel Proust’s nine-volume modernist epic In Search of Lost Time is often seen more like a personal challenge than a novel. But in this unique, freewheeling essay, British philosopher Alain de Botton argues that reading the famous text might just make you a better person. As much a quirky self-help guide as it is an exercise in literary criticism, this brief audiobook explores how Proust’s sprawling tale shows us how to stop wasting our time and start appreciating our lives. With witty digressions ranging from daily newspapers to Monty Python, de Botton reveals how reading fiction opens our minds to new experiences and makes us examine our own day-to-day lives with newfound clarity and interest, increasing empathy for others and making us slow down to enjoy ourselves. Narrator Nicholas Ball’s conversational tone makes the task sound even more enticing. Even if you never pick up Proust, this is a thoughtful and enlightening way to approach literature and life.
