Swann’s Way

A love takes hold. Jealousy follows. Memory keeps the wound alive.

In Swann’s Way, the first volume of Marcel Proust’s monumental In Search of Lost Time, a seemingly ordinary love affair becomes a profound exploration of desire, jealousy, memory, and the strange ways we deceive ourselves. Charles Swann, a sophisticated Parisian man who moves comfortably among the city’s aristocratic circles, becomes obsessed with Odette de Crécy, a woman he initially finds only mildly attractive.

As his feelings deepen, so do his suspicions, and what begins as romance gradually turns into an exhausting struggle with jealousy and uncertainty. Proust examines how love can transform another person into an object of fantasy, how memory reshapes the past, and how time changes our understanding of the people we once believed we knew. Elegant, intimate, and psychologically penetrating, Swann’s Way is both a story of doomed love and one of the great literary studies of the human heart.

• The first volume of Proust’s seven-volume In Search of Lost Time
• A landmark exploration of love, jealousy, memory, desire, society, and time
• Introduces many of the characters, themes, and social worlds that unfold throughout Proust’s masterpiece

A deeply intimate portrait of love and obsession, Swann’s Song shows why Proust remains one of literature’s greatest chroniclers of memory, desire, and the elusive passage of time.

Edition details

• Audience: Teens & young adults, Adults — For readers beginning Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and anyone drawn to intimate, psychological fiction about love and memory.
• Genre: Literature
• Format:
  • Paperback — Elegant print edition presenting the complete, unabridged text, and ships in 3–5 business days.
  • Hardcover — Elegant print edition presenting the complete, unabridged text, and ships in 5–7 business days.
  • Ebook — DRM-free EPUB, compatible with Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, and all major e-readers. Instant download after purchase.
  • Audiobook (Coming Soon)
• Reading promise: An elegant, intimate story of love and jealousy that opens the world of In Search of Lost Time and shows how memory reshapes everything we feel.

About the Author

Marcel Proust (1871–1922) was a French novelist, essayist, and critic best known for In Search of Lost Time, one of modern literature’s greatest achievements. His writing transformed the novel through its exploration of memory, perception, consciousness, love, jealousy, art, and the passage of time. Drawing extensively on his own experiences and the social world of fin-de-siècle France, Proust created a vast literary universe whose influence can be seen in generations of writers who followed.