Books that Changed Humanity | Marcel Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time)

Books that Changed Humanity is an initiative of the Humanities Research Centre, based at The Australian National University. The Humanities Research Centre invites experts to introduce and lead discussion of major texts from a variety of cultural traditions, all of which have informed the way we understand ourselves both individually and collectively as human beings.

Join us as James Grieve introduces and discusses Marcel Proust's masterpiece À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time).

À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time, or previously translated as Remembrance of Things Past), published in seven volumes between 1913 and 1927, is the most prominent work of French essayist, novelist and critic, Marcel Proust.

James Grieve is a Visiting Fellow in French in the School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics. He has taught French language and literature at ANU since 1962; in more recent years, he has also taught in Translation Studies. In 2017, he may equal the record set by Immanuel Kant of teaching at the same university for fifty-five years. Among books he has translated from French are Robert Lacour-Gayet’s Histoire de l’Australie (1972), scholarly works on myrmecology, autism, trade in the Roman world, the origin of language, books for children and the first two parts of Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu (Canberra, 1982 and Penguin, London 2002, & Viking, New York 2004). His Dictionary of Contemporary French Connectors was published in 1996 (Routledge, London). He has published two novels for Young Adults, A Season of Grannies (UQP, 1987) and They’re Only Human (Allen & Unwin, 2004) and a novella, Something in Common (FinlayLloyd, 2010). He reviewed books for The Canberra Times for forty-seven years.

All members of the public are welcome to come, listen, and share their thoughts about some great works of literature.