The Guermantes Way

by Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust released the first part of The Guermantes Way in Paris in 1920, moving his sprawling novel sequence further into the grand town houses and glittering soirées of the Faubourg Saint-Germain just after the First World War had unsettled every code of French society. Printed by the Nouvelle Revue Française, the volume marked Proust’s switch to a new publisher and arrived with the aura of a writer already famous for winning the Prix Goncourt the previous year. The story follows the narrator as his family takes an apartment inside the aristocratic Guermantes wing, placing him in daily contact with the elusive Duchesse he has long watched from afar. Evening walks across the courtyard turn into invitations to salon dinners where reigning nobles trade gossip and political rumors, while at home he endures the slow illness and death of his grandmother, an event described with unblinking tenderness that anchors the social spectacle in private grief. Proust lingers over lamp-lit tapes…