Swann's Way

The Innocence of Childhood

“The thirst for something other than what we have…to bring something new, even if it is worse, some emotion, some sorrow; when our sensibility, which happiness has silenced like an idle harp, wants to resonate under some hand, even a rough one, and even if it might be broken by it.” — Marcel Proust

Swann’s Way is the first volume of the masterpiece In Search of Lost Time. Using the technique of involuntary memory, Marcel Proust travels back to his childhood, where the reader meets Charles Swann, a family friend. Memories fade and reappear in Proust’s mind, this time telling the sad love story between Swann and Odette, an intriguing woman with an unusual style. What more can the narrator remember?