Marcel Proust

Here are the first two volumes of Proust’s monumental achievement, Swann’s Way and Within a Budding Grove. The famous overture to Swann's Way sets down the grand themes that govern In Search of Lost Time: as the narrator recalls his childhood in Paris and Combray, exquisite memories, long since passed—his mother’s …

In this conclusion to this section of Proust’s classic, we get to understand what he means by budding grove.’ As the summer on the beach winds down, the adolescent Proust is increasingly smitten by the young beauties his age he passes by but never gets to meet... until a well-known painter gives him that very chance. …