The first volume of Marcel Proust’s monumental masterpiece—in the classic Scott Moncrieff–Kilmartin translation—is not only a perfect introduction to a literary landmark, it also stands on its own as one of the most sensitive renderings of childhood in fiction and a brilliant meditation on the recreation of the past through art and memory.

Swann’s Way is the most frequently read part of Proust’s epic novel, Remembrance of Things Past (also known as In Search of Lost Time). It introduces subjects that resonate throughout the entire work, including the narrator’s love for Swann’s daughter Gilberte, Swann’s jealous passion for Odette, and the rise of the nouveaux-riches Verdurins. Proust’s narrator vividly recalls his childhood in Paris and Combray, most famously in a fraught evocation of his mother’s good-night kiss and in the iconic scene where the taste of a madeleine dipped in tea brings back a flood of memory.