Finding Time Again: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 7 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

by Marcel Proust, Ian Patterson (Translator), Ian Patterson (Editor), Ian Patterson (Introduction), Ian Patterson (Noted by)

Overview

The long-awaited final volume in the acclaimed Penguin translation of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time—one of the world’s most beloved works of literature

“The greatest literary work of the twentieth century.” —The New York Times

A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, with flaps and deckle-edged paper

Ian Patterson’s acclaimed new translation of Finding Time Again introduces a new generation of American readers to the literary riches of Marcel Proust. The seventh and final volume in Penguin Classics' superb new edition of In Search of Lost Time—the first completely new translation of Proust's masterpiece since the 1920s—brings us a more comic and lucid prose than readers of English have previously been able to enjoy.

In Finding Time Again, Marcel discovers his world destroyed by war and those he knew transformed by the march of time. An exquisite picture of France in the throes of the First World War, and containing, in the “Bal des têtes” sequence, one of Proust’s most devastating set pieces, Finding Time Again triumphantly describes the paradox of facing mortality yet overcoming it through the act of writing. As Marcel rediscovers his vocation, he realizes that he can live on by writing down the story of his own memories and of his quest to recapture the past.

For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143133711
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/10/2023
Series:	In Search of Lost Time , #7
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	157,292
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Marcel Proust (1871–1922) was born in Auteuil, France. In his twenties, following a year in the army, he became a conspicuous society figure, frequenting the most fashionable Paris salons of the day. After 1899, however, his chronic asthma, the deaths of his parents, and his growing disillusionment with humanity caused him to lead an increasingly retired life. From 1907 on, he rarely emerged from his apartment on Boulevard Haussmann, where he wrote letters and devoted himself to the completion of In Search of Lost Time.

Ian Patterson (translator) is a poet and translator and a fellow of Queens’ College, Cambridge, where he teaches English. He has published numerous essays on twentieth-century literature and is married to the writer Olivia Laing.

Christopher Prendergast (general editor), the author of Living and Dying with Marcel Proust, is a professor emeritus of French literature at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of King’s College.

Date of Birth:

July 10, 1871

Date of Death:

November 18, 1922

Place of Birth:

Auteuil, near Paris, France

Place of Death:

Paris, France

Editorial Reviews

★ 10/17/2022

With this sublime translation of Proust’s final volume of the magisterial In Search of Lost Time, Patterson concludes a project that began with Lydia Davis’s translation of Swann’s Way in 2004. This seventh book was untyped at the end of Proust’s life and subject to hasty revisions and alterations by its original publishers in 1927. Patterson provides readers with a great gift by basing his translation on a 1988 revision, which opens with a different beginning than the comparatively awkward version previously translated by Andreas Mayor in 1970, based on a 1954 version. The unnamed narrator, temporarily sidelined, in Tansonville, from the Paris soirees and salons, sustains himself on memories of lost love Albertine and gossip concerning the mercurial Gilberte and her husband, the narrator’s doomed confidante Robert Saint-Loup. Meanwhile, with Paris riven by WWI, the decadent Baron de Charlus makes a great show of supporting the German side against the French, and the illustrious parties of the Verdurins and the Guermantes, which so captivated the narrator for much of the saga, have begun to grow stale. In his exceptional final installment, Proust recaptures the reveries, ambitions, and moments in time that divide people’s inner worlds from the mysteries of others. Whether for the curious or the devoted, this is the definitive version with which to conclude Proust’s masterpiece. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

The definitive version with which to conclude Proust’s masterpiece . . . With this sublime translation . . . Patterson provides readers with a great gift.” ―Publishers Weekly, starred review

“[Proust’s] ambitious program reaches its highest pitch in Finding Time Again. . . . Patterson . . . has a good ear for the sonic qualities of [In Search of Lost Time’s] prose. . . . A sense of humor is necessary for readers of Finding Time Again, which features some of Proust’s most poignant errors. . . . Patterson’s idea of fidelity often allows Proust’s errors to stand where authorial intention—as it often is—is in doubt. . . . But, in their way, they are errors we are lucky to have, since they correspond to the urgency that informed much of the drafting of the novel’s conclusion.” ―Bookforum

From the Publisher