Peter Brooks, The New York Times Book Review
Indispensable... the critical modernist work, overtop-ping the books of even such giants as Joyce and Mann.

Book Description
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower is Proust’s spectacular dissection of male and female adolescence, charged with the narrator’s memories of Paris and the Normandy seaside. At the heart of the story lie his relationships with his grandmother and with the Swann family. As a meditation on different forms of love, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower has no equal. Here, Proust introduces some of his greatest comic inventions, from the magnificently dull M. de Norpois to the enchanting Robert de Saint-Loup. It is memorable as well for the first appearance of the two figures who for better or worse are to dominate the narrator’s life—the Baron de Charlus and the mysterious Albertine.

About the Author
Marcel Proust (1871–1922) was the greatest French novelist of the twentieth century. James Grieve, former reader in French at the Australian National University, has published a translation of the first part of Proust’s work (Swann’s Way, 1982) and two novels for young adults. Christopher Prendergast is professor of French at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of King’s College.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

James Grieve's acclaimed new translation of In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower will introduce a new century of American readers to the literary riches of Marcel Proust. As the second volume in this superb edition of In Search of Lost Time -- the first completely new translation of Proust's novel since the 1920s -- it brings us a more comic and lucid prose than English readers have previously been able to enjoy. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower is Proust's spectacular dissection of male and female adolescence, charged with the narrator's memories of Paris and the Normandy seaside. At the heart of the story lie his relationships with his grandmother and with the Swann family. As a meditation on different forms of love, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower has no equal. Here, Proust introduces some of his greatest comic inventions, from the magnificently dull M. de Norpois to the enchanting Robert de Saint-Loup. It is memorable as well for the first appearance of the two figures who for better or worse are to dominate the narrator's life -- the Baron de Charlus and the mysterious Albertine.

FROM THE CRITICS

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