In Search Of Lost Timeis Proust's masterpiece and was described bySomerset Maughamas the greatest novel of the 20th century. This edition contains notes, addenda and synopses."Proust isn't just the most profound of novelists, but the most entertaining, too."-The IndependentMarcel Proust'smonumental seven-part novelIn Search of Lost Timeis considered by many to be the greatest novel of the twentieth century. The fourth volume,Sodom and Gomorrah, is notable for its pioneering discussion of homosexuality. After its publication,Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette(known asColette) wrote to Proust, "No one has written pages such as these on homosexuals, no one!" InSodom and Gomorrah, Proust's narrator not only depicts the class tensions of a changing France at the beginning of the twentieth century but also exposes the decadence of aristocratic Parisian society and muses upon the subjects of homosexuality and sexual jealousy. In the opening scene, the narrator secretly observes a sexual encounter between two men that is played out 'as though in obedience to the laws of an occult art' The book unfolds on matters of 'vice,' 'inversion,' mystery, desire, love, longing, and illusion.“The thing about Proust is his combination of the utmost sensibility with the utmost tenacity. He searches out these butterfly shades to the last grain.”—Virginia WoolfThe final volume of a new, definitive text ofA la recherche du temps perduwas published by the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade in 1989. For this authoritative English-language edition,D. J. Enrighthas revised the lateTerence Kilmartin'sacclaimed reworking ofC. K. Scott Moncrieff'stranslation to take into account the new French editions.