Here, Proust’s vision, psychological understanding and vivid powers of description combine to create one of the most poetic and magical works in all literature. Proust's most prominent work, it is popularly known for its length and the notion of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the 'episode of the Madeleine. Swann’s Way Read by Neville Jason abridged Swann’s Way forms the first part of Marcel Proust’s magnificent autobiographical cycle Remembrance of Things Past. It is a novel written in the form of an autobiography.

Swann's Way is the first book in the seven-volume work In Search of Lost Time, or Remembrance of Things Past, by Marcel Proust. I would ask myself what o’clock it could be I could hear the whistling of trains, which, now nearer and now farther off, punctuating the distance like the note of a bird in a forest, shewed me in perspective the deserted countryside through which a traveller would be hurrying towards the nearest station: the path that he followed being fixed for ever in his memory by the general excitement due to being in a strange place, to doing unusual things, to the last words of conversation, to farewells exchanged beneath an unfamiliar lamp which echoed still in his ears amid the silence of the night and to the delightful prospect of being once again at home.Download cover art Download CD case insert Swann's Way Then it would begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former existence must be to a reincarnate spirit the subject of my book would separate itself from me, leaving me free to choose whether I would form part of it or no and at the same time my sight would return and I would be astonished to find myself in a state of darkness, pleasant and restful enough for the eyes, and even more, perhaps, for my mind, to which it appeared incomprehensible, without a cause, a matter dark indeed. This impression would persist for some moments after I was awake it did not disturb my mind, but it lay like scales upon my eyes and prevented them from registering the fact that the candle was no longer burning. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say ‘I’m going to sleep.’ And half an hour later the thought that it was time to go to sleep would awaken me I would try to put away the book which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light I had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between François I and Charles V. For a long time I used to go to bed early.

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