Swann's Way

First published in 1913, 'Swann's Way' is sufficed with scalding, insightful, and amusing criticisms of French society in an ingenious prose style by Marcel Proust, a French novelist, critic, and essayist. This is the first novel of Marcel Proust's monumental novel "e;In Search of Lost Time"e;, originally published in French in seven volumes. With narration that alternates between first and third person, it unconventionally presents Proust's recurring themes of memory, love, art, and the human experience. After elaborate reminiscences about his childhood with relatives in rural Combray and in urban Paris, Proust's narrator recalls a story regarding Charles Swann, a major figure in his Combray childhood, and his escapades in nineteenth-century privileged Parisian society, revolving around his obsessive love for young socialite Odette de Crecy.