Marcel Proust

Valentin Louis Georges Eugene Marcel Proust was a French novelist, literary critic and essayist best known for A la recherche du temps perdu, translated into English as In Search of Lost Time, published in seven volumes between 1913 and 1927 and totaling around 1.25 million words, considered one of the most influential works of the twentieth century. Born to a wealthy Parisian family, he struggled from childhood with severe asthma and moved in elite Parisian society, experiences that supplied material for his novel; he began writing it in 1908 and lived to see the first volume published in 1913, with the remaining volumes edited and published posthumously by his brother after his death from pneumonia in 1922. The novel helped pioneer the stream of consciousness technique and is regarded as a landmark of literary modernism for its meditation on memory, desire, artistic creativity and class.