Within a Budding Grove describes the first shoots of an astonishing love affair. When Proust\"s adolescent narrator travels from Paris to the sunny seaside town of Balbec he meets an intriguing set of new acquaintances who provide him with both friendship and entertainment....

In the two novels - The Captive and The Fugitive - contained in this volume, Proust\"s narrator is living in his mother\"s apartment in Paris with his lover, Albertine. However, this is far from an idyllic state of affairs. His obsessive love for her means that their relationship is shadowed by jealousy and headed for tragedy....

In Sodom and Gomorrah Proust\"s narrator not only depicts the class tensions of a changing France at the beginning of the twentieth century but also exposes the decadence of aristocratic Parisian society and muses upon the subjects of homosexuality and sexual jealousy....

In The Guermantes Way Proust\"s narrator recalls his initiation into the dazzling world of Parisian high society. Looking back over his time in the glamorous salons of the aristocracy, he satirises this shallow world and his own youthful infatuation with it....

Time Regained begins in the bleak and uncertain years of World War I. Years later, after the war\"s end, Proust\"s narrator returns to Paris and reflects on time, reality, jealousy, artistic creation, and the raw material of literature - his past life....

The definitive translation of one of the greatest French novels of the twentieth century In the opening volume of Proust\"s great novel, the narrator travels backwards in time in order to tell the story of a love affair that had taken place before his own birth....