The last three of the seven volumes contain oversights and 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. 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. Proust continued to work on it until his final illness in the autumn of 1922 forced him to break off. In Search of Lost Time is a novel in seven volumes.
But for most readers it is the characters of the novel who loom the largest: Swann and Odette, Monsieur de Charlus, Morel, the Duchesse de Guermantes, Françoise, Saint-Loup and so many others - Giants, as the author calls them, immersed in Time. On the surface a traditional Bildungsroman describing the narrator’s journey of self-discovery, this huge and complex book is also a panoramic and richly comic portrait of France in the author’s lifetime, and a profound meditation on the nature of art, love, time, memory and death.
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