In Search of Lost Time, Book 1: Swann's Way

Swann’s Way is the first volume of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. It follows an unnamed narrator whose involuntary memories—triggered famously by tasting a madeleine dipped in tea—reconstruct his childhood in the village of Combray. The novel explores themes of memory, the subjectivity of love, and the passage of time, culminating in a detailed account of a family friend, Charles Swann, and his painful, obsessive romance with Odette de Crécy.