This is a journey in search of the traces of eight legendary lost books The clues are fragile the hope of finding these pages scarce Yet maybe somewhere they still exist They exist as a rumour or a fading memory They vanished from history leaving scarcely a trace lost to fire censorship theft war or deliberate destruction yet those who seek them are convinced they will find them This is the story of one man's quest for eight mysterious lost books Taking us from Florence to Regency London the Russian Steppe to British Columbia Giorgio van Straten unearths stories of infamy & tragedy glimmers of hope & bitter twists of fate There are among others the rediscovered masterpiece that he read but failed to save from destruction; the Hemingway novel that vanished in a suitcase at the Gare du Lyon; the memoirs of Lord Byron burnt to avoid a scandal; the Magnum Opus of Bruno Schulz disappeared along with its author in wartime Poland; the mythical Sylvia Plath novel that may one day become reality As gripping as a detective novel as moving as an elegy this is the tale of a love affair with the impossible of the things that slip away from us but which sometimes live again in the stories we tell ...

THE ACCLAIMED FULLY REVISED EDITION OF THE SCOTT MONCRIEFF & KILMARTIN TRANSLATIONIn 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 Swann's jealous love for Odette provides a prophetic model of the narrator's own relationships All Proust's great themes
- time & memory love & loss art & the artistic vocation
- are here in kernel form

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Marcel continues his voyage of discovery through the homosexual world where affairs of the ageing Baron de Charlus lead to unexpected & hilarious adventures 700 pages Proust Marcel ...

THE ACCLAIMED FULLY REVISED EDITION OF THE SCOTT MONCRIEFF & KILMARTIN TRANSLATIONIn 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 & his own youthful infatuation with it His observations & his experiences with his lover Albertine also educate him in the volatile nature of desire as he walks the path towards adulthood ...

THE ACCLAIMED FULLY REVISED EDITION OF THE SCOTT MONCRIEFF & KILMARTIN TRANSLATIONIn Sodom & 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 & muses upon the subjects of homosexuality & sexual jealousy ...

In Search of Lost Time is one of the greatest most entertaining reading experiences in any language This book is an English translation of the French original ...

One of the greatest most entertaining reading experiences in any language Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time Vol 1 The Way by Swann's is published in a new translation from the French by Lydia Davis in Penguin Classics The Way by Swann's is one of the great novels of childhood depicting the impressions of a sensitive boy of his family & neighbours brought dazzlingly back to life by the famous taste of a madeleine It contains the separate short novel A Love of Swann's a study of sexual jealousy that forms a crucial part of the vast unfolding structure of In Search of Lost Time This book established Proust as one of the greatest voices of the modern age
- satirical sceptical confiding & endlessly varied in his responses to the human condition Since the original pre-war translation Remembrance of Things Past by C K Scott Moncrieff & Terence Kilmartin there has been no completely new rendering of Proust's French original into English This translation brings to the fore a more sharply engaged comic & lucid Proust As the great story unfolds from its magical opening scenes to its devastating end it is this Penguin Classics edition of In Search of Lost Time that makes Proust accessible to a new generation Marcel Proust (1871-1922) is generally viewed as the greatest French novelist & perhaps the greatest European novelist of the 20th century He lived much of his later life as a reclusive semi-invalid in a sound-proofed flat in Paris giving himself over entirely to writing his masterpiece In Search of Lost Time (A la recherche du temps perdu) If you enjoyed In Search Of Lost Time you might like James Joyce's Ulysses also available in Penguin Modern Classics' The latest Penguin Proust is a triumph & will bring this inexhaustible artwork to new audiences throughout the English-speaking world' Sunday Telegraph
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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 Swann's jealous love for Odette provides a prophetic model of the narrator's own relationships All Proust's great themes
- time & memory love & loss art & the artistic vocation
- are here in kernel form

...

Mary Shelley was brought up by her father in a house filled with radical thinkers poets philosophers & writers of the day Aged sixteen she eloped with Percy Bysshe Shelley embarking on a relationship that was lived on the move across Britain & Europe as she coped with debt infidelity & the deaths of three children before early widowhood changed her life forever Most astonishingly it was while she was still a teenager that Mary composed her canonical novel Frankenstein creating two of our most enduring archetypes today The life story is well-known But who was the woman who lived it? She's left plenty of evidence & in this fascinating dialogue with the past Fiona Sampson sifts through letters diaries & records to find the real woman behind the story She uncovers a complex generous character
- friend intellectual lover & mother
- trying to fulfil her own passionate commitment to writing at a time when to be a woman writer was an extraordinary & costly anomaly Published for the 200th anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein this is a major new work of biography by a prize-winning writer & poet

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Turning his back on the British legal profession & the requirement to account for every six minutes of his time Geoff Steward & his lucky five-inch articulated Doctor Who figure go off-grid & on the road across America From New York to Alaska he tries to fend for himself without his trusty PA & life support the unflappable Charmaine for whom contentment lies in Jesus Christ & custard creams With his blend of waspish wit & mischievous charm Steward seeks out normal Americans such as Joe le Taxi the former NYPD officer who was one of the first on the scene at the Twin Towers & now runs an extortionate executive taxi service; Pam & Bob a paranoid psychiatrist & a failed actor who once saw the back of Meryl Streep's head; Taylor the Alaskan bushwhacker who was raised by wolves & revels in their scat; Jeb the Yosemite inn-sitter who lives his life at the pace of a Ford Model T; Kacey Musgraves the controversial country music star staying at the farm in Tennessee; & Sheriff Duke of Calhoun County South Carolina who reintroduces Steward to the long (and armed) arm of the law For anyone at a crossroads contemplating a temporary or permanent career break this affectionate travel romp is essential reading Journeying coast-to-coast across the US with Steward might just remind you that despite the post-Trump hysteria there are many normal & decent Americans out there ...