Swann's Way is the first volume of Proust's supreme masterpiece, the seven-part novel entitled
Remembrance of Things Past. In it, Proust recalls the early youth of Charles Swann in the small town of Combray as seen through the eyes of the narrator. It then shifts to Swann himself, now a fashionable man caught up in turn-of-the-century Paris and a tortured love affair. A scathing, often comic dissection of French society, it is also a portrait of the artist and a discovery of the aesthetic by which the portrait is painted.
This translation by C.K. Scott Moncrieff, completed in 1922, introduced the English-speaking world to Proust, who has had immense influence on 20th century literature.