Mr. Proust's Library

As fascinating for the general reader as it is valuable for students and book groups, Mr. Proust's Library is at once a unique close reading of Marcel Proust's masterpiece Remembrance of Things Past (In Search of Lost Time) and an elegant exploration of Proust's many and varied loves—his literary sources. Few writers read as deeply and as extensively as Proust. He avidly consumed novels, poetry, plays, and letters. His favorites included Honoré de Balzac, Thomas Hardy, the Goncourts, John Ruskin, Jean Racine, Victor Hugo, T. S. Eliot, Edgar Allan Poe, and Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Anka Muhlstein, a Goncourt-winning biographer, is our charming guide through Mr. Proust's reading list.