Today I thought of sharing with you the latest book I've read.
I found this book on my boyfriend's shelf and was curious to give it try.
"Swann in Love" by the French writer Marcel Proust. This is a Portuguese edition from 1984.
This book was first published in 1913 and belongs to Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" .
To be clear, "In Search of Lost Time" is a compilation project with seven volumes:
- Swann's Way
- In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
- The Guermantes Way
- Sodom and Gomorrah
- The Prisoner
- The Fugitive
- Time Regained
This book specifically is Part 2 of the first volume "Swann's Way" .
Anyway, "Swann in Love" is a novel that about love.
I would say it's a thorough, detailed, sometimes even cruel, love affair.
Charles Swann is a bon vivant aristocrat that lives in the "Belle Époque" France that one day meets Odette.
She was a very shallow young woman with a questionable reputation and "not his type".
Their story started with an unbothered flirt and goes to a point where it takes control of our main character's life
Another topic worth pointing out is that just like Swann, Proust himself was a french aristocrat as well which gave him a big insight into that circle.
So he couldn't miss the opportunity to criticize the "high society" and you can see the satire in some of his characters' anecdotal behavior.
"Swann in Love" is a unique case!
An exception in the whole that is Proust's masterpiece, a "novel" within a novel. That's why this part stands out so much, it can also be read without any background of the story.
So either buying a copy of "Swann in Love" or reading the whole masterpiece is acceptable!
Maybe I'll give it a try someday?
Has anyone read it?