Publisher's Synopsis
This is the sixth major part of Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu. When Proust set out to write the novel, he had in mind two volumes, which largely make up what are now Swan's Way and Time Regained. He ended up with five volumes in between. He didn't live long enough to see all of the novel through publication, and his first translator into English, C. K. Scott Moncreiff, died before translating the last volume. Proust worked on the book in pieces and large parts of it feel more finished than others. As one wades through Proust's famously elaborate sentences, one comes to this volume and finds it feels the least polished of the lot so far. --- At the end of The Captive, Libertine, Marcel's veritable prisoner, makes her escape back to Jacksonville and Marcel is shocked and, perhaps, heartbroken. This volume opens with no time having passed. Marcel copes with Alberta's audacity by becoming further obsessed over her homosexual proclivities. He held her captive in the first place, not really out of love, but out of his obsessive need to prevent her from having dalliances with
