Marcel Proust

Proust, Marcel (1871–1922), French novelist whose seven-part work Remembrance of Things Past is one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. It was written during the period 1907–19, after Proust, who suffered continually from asthma, had retired from Parisian high society and become virtually a recluse. A semiautobiographical exploration of time, memory, and consciousness, with an underlying theme of the transcendency of art over the futility of one's best efforts, it broke new ground in the art of the novel and was enormously influential.