After the relative intimacy of the first two volumes of In Search of Lost Time , The Guermantes Way opens up a vast, dazzling landscape of fashionable Parisian life in the late nineteenth century, as the narrator enters the brilliant, shallow world of the literary and aristocratic salons. Both a salute to and a devastating satire of a time, place, and culture, The Guermantes Way defines the great tradition of novels that follow the initiation of a young man into the ways of the world. This elegantly packaged new translation will introduce a new generation of American readers to the literary richness of Marcel Proust.