{"product_id":"swanns-way-1","title":"Swanns Way","description":"\u003cb\u003eNow available for the first time in the United States, a celebrated translation of the first volume of Proust’s \u003ci\u003eIn Search of Lost Time\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eSwann’s Way\u003c\/i\u003e, the first of the seven volumes that con­stitute Marcel Proust’s lifework, \u003ci\u003eIn Search of Lost Time\u003c\/i\u003e,  introduces the larger themes of the whole work while standing on its  own as a brilliant evocation of childhood, hopeless love, and the French  Belle Époque.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e We first encounter Proust’s narrator in middle age,  consumed with regret for his misspent life. Suddenly, he is back in the  past, seized by memories of childhood: his clinging attachment to his  mother, his dread of his father, summers in the country and the two  walks his family was in the habit of taking—one by an aristocratic  estate, the other by the house of a certain Charles Swann, to whom a  mystery was attached. A child’s world, and the world of adults the child  struggles to imagine, spread out before us, while Proust’s pages teem  with incident and puzzle­ment, pathos and humor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The novel then  takes a further step backwards to tell the story of Swann’s infatuation  with the courtesan Odette. Swann, man­-about­-town and familiar of  royalty, is reduced to walking after midnight, forlorn as a child  awaiting a good­night kiss.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e James Grieve began his career  translating Proust in the early 1970s, driven by his dismay at how many  readers recoiled from what they imagined to be the difficulty of  Proust’s work, and his translation of \u003ci\u003eSwann’s Way\u003c\/i\u003e brings out  the book’s fluency and speed as no other version does. It offers an  unequaled introduction to an incompa­rably absorbing work of art.","brand":"MediaPlace","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57308281700734,"sku":"NW9781681376295","price":13.59,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1379\/1261\/files\/9781681376295.jpg?v=1778578419","url":"https:\/\/mediaplace.com\/products\/swanns-way-1","provider":"MediaPlace","version":"1.0","type":"link"}