The Seventy-Five Folios and Other Unpublished Manuscripts

Marcel Proust

Dec 2023 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Malcolm Hillgartner

About this audiobook

One of the most significant literary events of the century, the discovery of manuscript pages containing early drafts of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time put an end to a decades-long search for the Proustian grail. The Paris publisher Bernard de Fallois claimed to have viewed the folios, but doubts about their existence emerged when none appeared in the Proust manuscripts bequeathed to the Bibliotheque Nationale in 1962. The texts had in fact been hidden among Fallois's private papers, found upon his death in 2018. The Seventy-Five Folios and Other Unpublished Manuscripts presents these folios here for the first time in English, along with seventeen other brief unpublished texts. Extensive commentary and notes by the Proust scholar Nathalie Mauriac Dyer offer insightful critical analysis. Characterized by Fallois as the "precious guide" to understanding Proust's masterpiece, the folios contain early versions of six episodes included in the novel. Listeners glimpse what Proust's biographer Jean-Yves Tadie describes as the "sacred moment" when the great work burst forth for the first time. The folios reveal the autobiographical extent of Proust's writing, with traces of his family life scattered throughout. Like a painter's sketches, Proust's folios tell a story of artistic evolution. Here is a literary magnum opus finding its final form.

About the author

Marcel Proust (1871-1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental In Search of Lost Time, which was published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927. His writings were published in numerous literary magazines, including Le Mensuel and La Revue Blanche.

Malcolm Hillgartner is an accomplished actor, writer, and musician. An AudioFile Best Voice of 2013 and the recipient of several Earphones Awards, he has narrated over 175 audiobooks.

Nathalie Mauriac Dyer is a senior researcher at the Institute of Modern Texts and Manuscripts Division of the National Center for Scientific Research in France, where she leads the Proust team. She is also the author of Proust inacheve: Le dossier Albertine disparue.

Sam Taylor is an award-winning literary translator and novelist. He has translated more than sixty books from French, including Laurent Binet's HHhH, Leïla Slimani's The Perfect Nanny, and Maylis de Kerangal's The Heart.