“And the others too were beginning to remark in Swann that abnormal, excessive, shameful and deserved senescence of bachelors, of all those for whom it seems that the great day which knows no morrow must be longer than for other men, since for them it is a void of promise, and from its dawn the moments steadily accumulate without any subsequent partition among offspring.”

French novelist, literary critic, and essayist

Marcel Proust was a French novelist, literary critic, and essayist. He is best known for À la recherche du temps perdu, the seven-volume novel published between 1913 and 1927. That work runs to around 1.25 million words and secured his place among the most influential writers of the twentieth century, according to critics and fellow authors. His reputation rests above all on this long, closely observed novel and on his wider influence on modern literature.