THE FOLIO SOCIETY

There were, in the environs of Combray, two "ways", which we used to take for our walks, and so diametrically opposed that we would actually leave the house by a different door.’ In Proust’s ravishing masterpiece, these two diverse ‘ways’ come to symbolise the choices facing his protagonist, Marcel, as he narrates his poignant quest to recover the past and to discover his own destiny. Beginning with idyllic childhood summers spent in Combray, his journey propels him onwards into the whirl of fashionable Parisian society and a life of emotional intensity. Arguably the greatest novel of the twentieth century, In Search of Lost Time draws us into a totally enveloping world of art, philosophy, music, social comedy and history, threaded through with the stories of a sprawling cast of characters. From the taste of a crumb of Madeleine cake steeped in tea, to the texture of a tapestry or the look of erotic desire on a lover’s face, Proust’s eye is sensitive to every telling detail. No other writer has so successfully transformed the ever-turning kaleidoscope of life into such a perfect work of art, nor so accurately captured the complexity of the human heart and mind.

Prunella Scales’s Desert Island Companion
‘I first read A la Recherche du Temps Perdu in French, more than 40 years ago – (actually, after reading the first two volumes, I was offered a part in a broadcast of the book, so I raced through volume three in Scott Moncrieff’s English translation). It has remained a magical resource, a book to revisit again and again.’ Prunella Scales

John Thirlwell’s Desert Island Companion
‘I first read In Search of Lost Time over three summers staying not very far from Cabourg/Balbec. I knew Paris well, so that superficially I was on familiar ground. What hooked me, though, was not familiarity, but the infinitely various world of Proust’s imagination and the lives of the characters which people it. Hooked as well by the mastery of his prose – the brilliant pictures he paints, the rhythms of music and life he describes and last, but above all else, his superlative style – all combining in one huge symphony. I demand of a book that it sweeps me into its world. On a desert island I would demand In Search of Lost Time.’ John Thirlwell

Philip Ziegler’s Desert Island Companion
‘In Search of Lost Time has the prime requirements of any desert island book – it is very long and demands careful reading. More than any other novel, it draws the reader into its diverse yet claustrophobic web, so that the world of Swann and the Guermantes becomes more real than everyday life around one. Proust observes with a penetration and perception that is often brilliantly funny, sometimes poignantly sad and always exquisitely precise. Only in Othello has obsessive jealousy been more terrifyingly portrayed.’ Philip Ziegler

Also chosen by Paula Fox and Sue Macartney-Snape