On the surface a traditional“Bildungsroman”describing the narrator’s journey of self-discovery, this huge & complex book is also a panoramic & richly comic portrait of France in the author’s lifetime, & a profound meditation on the nature of art, love, time, memory & death. But for most readers it is the characters of the novel who loom the largest: Swann & Odette, Monsieur de Charlus, Morel, the Duchesse de Guermantes, Françoise, Saint-Loup, & so many others —Giants, as the author calls them, immersed inTime.In Search of Lost Timeis a novel in seven volumes. The novel began to take shape in 1909.Proustcontinued to work on it until his final illness in the autumn of 1922 forced him to break off. Proust established the structure early on, but even after volumes were initially finished he kept adding new material, and edited one volume after another for publication. The last three of the seven volumes contain oversights & fragmentary or unpolished passages as they existed in draft form at the death of the author; the publication of these parts was overseen by his brother Robert.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 definitive French editions ofÀ la recherche du temps perdu(the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989).°°°The longest novel inPenguin Classics&Penguin Modern ClassicsisIn Search of Lost TimebyMarcel Proust. This modernist masterpiece sprawls across six chunky volumes & a total of 3,616 pages. Assuming a pace of one page a minute,In Search of Lost Timewill take you two solid days, 12 hours & 16 minutes to read, that is if you don’t pause to sleep, eat a madeleine or pursue an involuntary train of thought back to your childhood & your ailing aunt Leonie.