Marcel Proust
1871–1922 · French (Paris) · Belle Époque / Early 20th Century France
Known for: Author of In Search of Lost Time—a 4,000-page masterpiece widely considered the greatest 20th-century novel
Marcel Proust was a wealthy, sickly, half-Jewish Parisian who spent the last 14 years of his life in a cork-lined bedroom, writing obsessively through the night. He suffered from severe asthma and was hypersensitive to noise, light, and temperature. His seven-volume novel In Search of Lost Time is 4,000 pages of interior consciousness exploring memory, time, love, and French society.
He was a brilliant socialite in his youth who then withdrew to reconstruct his entire social world in fiction. The 'madeleine' scene—taste triggering involuntary memory—is one of literature's most famous passages. He died revising proofs, the ultimate perfectionist.
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