The Guermantes Way

By Marcel Proust, Mark Treharne (Translator)

Book #3 in the In Search of Lost Time series

A young man navigates the dazzling yet shallow world of Parisian salons.

4.3/5 Goodreads · 12,451 ratings

619 pages

$27.00Save 5%

In stock. Also at Amazon or Bookshop.

Bookroo's summary

In the late 19th century, a young narrator steps into the opulent world of Parisian salons, where wit and charm mask the superficiality of high society. As he mingles with the literary and aristocratic elite, he must discern genuine connections from mere facades. Will he find his place in this glittering yet hollow world, or will he become disillusioned by its empty allure? The Guermantes Way offers a satirical glimpse into a bygone era, challenging the protagonist to navigate the complexities of time, memory, and social ambition.

From the publisher

The third volume of one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century Mark Treharne’s acclaimed new translation of The Guermantes Way will introduce a new generation of American readers to the literary richness of Marcel Proust. The third volume in Penguin Classics’ superb new edition of In Search of Lost Time–the first completely new translation of Proust’s masterpiece since the 1920s–brings us a more comic and lucid prose than English readers have previously been able to enjoy. After the relative intimacy of the first two volumes of In Search of Lost Time, The Guermantes Way opens up a vast, dazzling landscape of fashionable Parisian life in the late nineteenth century, as the narrator enters the brilliant, shallow world of the literary and aristocratic salons. Both a salute to and a devastating satire of a time, place, and culture, The Guermantes Way defines the great tradition of novels that follow the initiation of a young man into the ways of the world.

At a glance