From Publishers Weekly
Relax: it's fantastic. There's no question that Davis's American English is thinner and more literal than C.K. Scott Montcrieff's archaically inflected turns of phrase and idioms, at least as revised by Terence Kilmartin and later by D.J. Enright. The removal of some of the familiar layers of the past in this all-new translation gives one a feeling similar to that of encountering an old master painting that has just been cleaned: the colors seem sharper and momentarily disorienting. Yet many readers will find it exhilarating, allowing the text to shed slight airs that were not quite Proust's and making many of the jokes much more immediate (as when he implies that sense-organ atrophy in the bourgeois is a defense mechanism and the result of hardening unarticulated feelings). As accomplished translator and novelist Davis (The End of the Story) notes in her foreword, she has followed Proust's sentence structure as closely as possible "in its every aspect," including punctuation, word order and word choice. To take just one case, where Montcrieff/Kilmartin describe Mlle. Vinteuil finding it pleasant to metaphorically "sojourn" in sadism, Davis has the much more definitive "emigrate." Proust's psychological inquiry generally feels much sharper, giving a much more palpable sense of Freud and Bergson-and of the young Marcel's willful (if not malefic) manipulations of those around him. For first-timers who don't have French and are allergic to the slightest whiff of euphemism, this is the best means for traveling the way by Swann's.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
Before I listened to this magnificent performance, I groaned at the prospect of having to sit through more than twenty hours of Proust on tape. (And this program represents only half the complete novel.) The highly abstract, paragraph-long sentences! The apparently disconnected flashes of memory and perception that send us careening backward and forward in time! If ever a book demanded to be read and not heard, I thought, surely it was this one. I was wrong. Recorded Books has selected a narrator who makes Proust light-going, if that's imaginable. George Guidall draws us into the banter and gossip of the provincial French bourgeoisie; he makes us feel as if we were at the table with Marcel's family or sharing the parlor with Monsieur Swann's coterie. More impressive still is the ease with which he handles even the most difficult exposition. Try, for instance, Guidall's rendition of "Combray," a complex meditation on Marcel's childhood at his family's country home. What might have been sleep-inducing becomes a haunting, even mesmerizing, experience--the mark of a virtuoso audiobook narrator. J.M. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


The Boston Globe, January 1999
"For classic literature, check out the new "Cover to Cover" series. All are 19th and 20th century works produced in England. They are handsomely packaged in sturdy, decorative cardboard boxes. The series carries the exclusive Royal Warrant from Charles, Prince of Wales."


Sunday Telegraph
"Cover to Cover's unabridged readings of classic novels are in a class of their own."


Deirdre Donahue, USA TODAY, December 3, 1998
"These Cover to Cover tapes offer up a delectable feast for fans of the spoken word. We're talking class act here - from the elegant covers to the accomplished readers."


Review
?Reading Swann?s Way was a rapturous experience.??David Denby


Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French


Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French


Download Description
Swann's Way, the first part of A la recherche de temps perdu, Marcel Proust's seven-part cycle, was published in 1913. In it, Proust introduces the themes that run through the entire work. The narrator recalls his childhood, aided by the famous madeleine; and describes M. Swann's passion for Odette. The work is incomparable. Edmund Wilson said "[Proust] has supplied for the first time in literature an equivalent in the full scale for the new theory of modern physics."


From the Inside Flap
The first and best known volume of one of the landmarks of world literature. Available separately for those who want to approach Proust carefully!


From the Trade Paperback edition.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertainingreading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century. But since its original prewar translation there has been no completely new version in English. Now, Penguin Classics brings Proust's masterpiece to new audiences throughout the world, beginning with Lydia Davis's internationally acclaimed translation of the first volume, Swann's Way. even such giants as Joyce and Mann. (Peter Brooks, The New York Times Book Review) service in bringing us back to Proust. (Claire Messud, Newsday)

Author Biography: Marcel Proust (1871￯﾿ﾽ1922) was the greatest French novelist of the twentieth century.

Lydia Davis is an acclaimed fiction writer. Made a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government for her translations, Davis was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2003.

SYNOPSIS

'The transmutation of sensation into sentiment, the ebb tide of memory, waves of emotion such as desire, jealousy, and artistic euphoria--this is the material of this enormous and yet singularly light and translucid work.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

It is marvelously about life. It reminds me of Dickens, Shakespeare, Moliere. Proust was, among other things, one of the great comic writers of all time. — Terence Kilmartin

There has never been anyone else of Proust's ability to show us things; Proust's pointing finger is unequaled. — Walter Benjamin

Reading Swann's Way was a raptorous experience. — Jonathan Lyons