22 h 5 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · 542 pagesHardcover · 6 × 9 in · 542 pagesAbout this book
A boy waits for a goodnight kiss, while a whole world of love and longing gathers in the dark.
In Swann’s Way, Marcel Proust follows a narrator who looks back on childhood summers in Combray. His mother’s attention means everything to him. Family habits, familiar walks and a cake dipped in tea become paths into the past, where small moments hold feelings that ordinary memory cannot reach.
The novel also turns to Charles Swann, a cultured man whose love for Odette de Crécy grows tangled with jealousy. A tender phrase from Vinteuil’s sonata becomes bound to his desire. In Paris, the young narrator longs to know Gilberte Swann. Across these lives, imagination makes people and places both precious and painfully elusive.
What you’ll discover
- A childhood felt closely Enter the bedroom where a mother’s goodnight kiss carries the weight of a whole day.
- The taste of memory Follow a cake dipped in tea into the recovered streets and feelings of Combray.
- Love sharpened by jealousy Watch Swann’s longing for Odette turn moments apart into restless questions and worry.
- Music bound to desire Discover how a short phrase from Vinteuil’s sonata becomes inseparable from Swann’s love.
- The power of names See how the young narrator’s imagination fills names and faces with longing.
Is it for you?
This book suits readers who enjoy slow, close attention to feeling, memory and manners, and who like to savor sentences. It may be less suited to anyone who wants a fast plot, or who wants action in every chapter.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A boy lies awake and remembers
- One goodnight kiss means everything
- A cake dipped in tea restores a town
- Combray's people, rituals and church
- Two walks that split the world
- Swann meets Odette and the little phrase
- Jealousy feeds a love that pleasure cannot
- Paris, Gilberte and the magic of names
- What the book is really about, and how it works
Who’s who
- The narratorA sensitive boy at Combray who longs for his mother's attention, dreams of becoming a writer and falls hopelessly in love with names and faces.
- Charles SwannA cultured, wealthy man of Paris society and a family neighbour who falls into an obsessive, painful love for Odette.
- Odette de CrécyA woman of uncertain standing who captures Swann's attention, partly because she seems to resemble a figure in a Botticelli painting.
- The narrator's motherA gentle, loving presence whose goodnight kiss is the center of the boy's day and the source of his deepest anxiety.
- FrançoiseThe family's devoted and strong-willed cook, a gifted maker of meals who rules her kitchen and holds fixed views.
- Gilberte SwannSwann's daughter, a girl with red-gold hair whom the narrator glimpses at Combray and later longs to know in Paris.
- Madame VerdurinThe head of a small Paris social circle who demands loyalty from her guests and gladly drops anyone who displeases her.
- VinteuilA modest composer in Combray whose sonata, with its short tender phrase, becomes the music of Swann's love.
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- Audiobook
- 22 h 5 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 14 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in, 542 pages: 16,95 USD when you start free, 22,95 USD on its own.
- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Swann's Way
by Marcel Proust· 1913
Childhood memories and a jealous love affair reveal desire’s workings.
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Language: Français
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1 of 9
A boy lies awake and remembers
The novel opens with a narrator half asleep, trying to work out where he is. He recalls how, for a long time, he went to bed early. Waking in the night, he cannot tell which room he lies in. Over the years he has slept in so many that his body keeps a map of them all, and it sometimes gets the map wrong.
From this confusion he drifts back to the bedroom he knew best as a child, in his family's house at Combray. Combray is a small town where the family spent Easter and the summer holidays. It was the home of his great aunts and of his Aunt Léonie. The narrator is saying that places are not only buildings. They live in the body, in habit, in the way light falls on a wall.
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The author
Marcel Proust
1871–1922 · French novelist
Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic and essayist. He was born in Paris in 1871 and died there in 1922. He lived mainly in Paris. He wrote the seven-volume novel In Search of Lost Time. Its first volume, Swann’s Way, appeared in 1913; the last appeared in 1927.
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What is Swann's Way about?
It is the first volume of In Search of Lost Time. It follows a boy's childhood at Combray, the love story of Charles Swann and Odette, and the narrator's first love in Paris, all shaped by memory.
What is the madeleine scene in Swann's Way?
The narrator tastes a small sponge cake dipped in tea and suddenly recalls his childhood at Combray in full detail. Proust uses it to show how involuntary memory works, triggered by a sensation rather than by effort.
Is Swann's Way hard to read?
It can be demanding because the sentences are long and the plot is slow. Reading at a relaxed pace helps. Many readers find the three parts easier once they follow the images and echoes rather than the events.
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