In Search of Lost Time has enthralled lovers of literature for nearly a century. But for diehard fans, its seven volumes are never enough: Proust fans also devour biographies of this most enigmatic of writers, tap guidebooks to navigate his magnum opus, and even sponsor book clubs devoted to plumbing its considerable depths. Here National Book Award nominee Alice Kaplan offers Proust fans the gift they’ve long been waiting for: a crystalline translation of Madame Proust, the enthralling biography of Proust’s mother.
Written by Evelyne Bloch-Dano and originally published in France to lavish critical acclaim, Madame Proust: A Biography explores how Marcel’s mother both inspired and informed his legendary novel. Renowned both jokingly and lovingly as the quintessential mama’s boy of all of modern literature, Proust was dramatically influenced by his mother, Jeanne Weil, and this intimate portrait of her life and times reveals precisely how, limning their unusually close bonds and the fin de siècle French milieu in which they lived.
Read the press release. Read a chapter from the book, “The Goodnight Kiss.”