Marcel Proust wrote one book in seven volumes. It took him fifteen years, most of them spent in a cork-lined room with the curtains drawn, because any sound or smell from the street broke his concentration — or reminded him too forcefully of the past.
He was born in Paris in 1871, into a wealthy family. His mother adored him; her death in 1905 was the turning point. Before it he had been a fashionable young man about town, a frequenter of salons and a friend of artists. Afterwards he became a recluse who understood that the essential thing had already happened, and that what remained was to write it down.
In Search of Lost Time begins with a biscuit dipped in tea. A small piece of madeleine releases a wave of memory — and Proust follows that wave through seven volumes, examining how memory works, how perception shifts, how people cease to be who they were.
He published the first volume at his own expense in 1913, after the major houses turned it down. The second brought him the Prix Goncourt in 1919. The final volumes appeared posthumously: Proust died of pneumonia in 1922. Beside his bed lay the manuscript he had gone on correcting to his last day.