A LIFETIME'S READING OF PROUST'S MASTERPIECE

"A work buzzing with appetite and curiosity."-Andrew Marr, author and broadcaster

"Living and Dying with Marcel Proust is a feast."-Lydia Davis, winner of the Man Booker International Prize

One of the masterpieces of twentieth-century fiction, A la recherche du temps perdu belongs in the tradition of the Initiation Story, the journey it describes combining elements drawn from the earlier narratives of great expectations and lost illusions, while recasting them in ways that are distinctively Proust's.

On the year that marks the centenary of Marcel Proust's death, the eminent literary scholar, Christopher Prendergast, traces that journey as it unfolds on an arc defined by the polarity of his title, living and dying. His book offers a chapter by chapter exploration of the rich sensory and impressionistic tapestry of a lived world, woven by the pulse of desire, the hauntings of memory and an ever alert responsiveness to tastes, perfumes, sounds, and colours. It also traces the construction of a unique architecture of narrative time and a corresponding mode of story-telling, marked by all manner of loops, swerves, detours, regressions and returns, from the macro level of the novel's plot to the micro level of the famously elaborate Proustian sentence. The lives of his characters, both major and minor, are shown as criss-crossing and converging in ways that often take the reader by surprise, before descending the arc on an irreversible trajectory of decline, as the body starts to fail and the grave beckons.

About the Author
Christopher Prendergast is Emeritus Professor of Modern French Literature at Cambridge University and a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. He directed the 2002 Penguin translation of A la recherche du temps perdu and is the author of Mirages and Mad Beliefs: Proust the Skeptic published in 2013.

Reviews
"A work buzzing with appetite and curiosity... a real delight. No Proustian should be without it." * Andrew Marr *
"Literate, lively, and leavened by wry and gentle humour, Living and Dying with Marcel Proust is a feast." * Lydia Davis, winner of the International Booker Prize *
"Scholarly, rich and succinct." * Irish Times *
"Christopher Prendergast takes issue with the idea that literature can be used as a self-help manual." -- Tom Sutcliffe * BBC Radio 4: Start the Week *
"A bibliophile treasure chest....Prendergast lays out a Proustian feast in each chapter. This one's not to be missed." *STARRED REVIEW* * Publishers Weekly *
Top 10 books of essays and literary criticism 2022 "Prendergast delves into a litany of Proustian miscellany, including insomnia, memory, addiction, and humor." * Publishers Weekly *
"A magnificent and very living book." * Brooklyn Rail *
"A thoroughly life-affirming book." * France Magazine *
"Brushing away the dust of bone-dry scholarship, Prendergast brings the work, and the great man himself, to life." * Buzz Magazine *
"This is a witty, urbane, entertaining guide to one of the glories of European literature. Any work on Proust that manages to mention en passant Fairport Convention, Kevin Kline, T.S. Eliot and Karl Marx is certainly one that is not hampered by academic convention." * Shiny New Books *
"This book will prompt many to reread Proust." * Library Journal *



Book Information
ISBN 9781787703513
Author Christopher Prendergast
Format Hardback
Page Count 256
Imprint Europa Compass
Publisher Europa Editions (UK) Ltd