Swann's Way

Where to begin? Proust’s gigantic masterpiece is the proverbial gift that keeps giving, none more so than in its explication and then repeated “demonstration” of the very thing it describes, the sensory triggers of what Proust calls involuntary memory but that here become the emotional propulsion for this book about writing the very beautiful book (or books—it comes in six volumes) you are reading.

Besides being probably the best novel ever written, this is certainly the best novel ever written about Jews. Set largely during the Dreyfus Affair in the 1890s, when the wrongful conviction of a Jewish officer for treason drove France to the brink of civil war, Proust’s epic novel explores the dynamics of Jewish assimilation and antisemitism with keen insight and biting wit. Half-Jewish himself, Proust understood better than anyone why Jews wanted to be part of a society that regarded them with at best ambivalence and at worst, outright disdain. The novel is about a lot of other things also—childhood,… show more.