In Search of Lost Time: The Prisoner and The Fugitive

Dark, anxious, fevered, The Prisoner and The Fugitive fulfil Swann’s much earlier warning to Marcel: ‘Though the subjection of the woman may briefly allay the jealousy of the man, it eventually makes it even more demanding. He reaches the point of treating his mistress like one of those prisoners who are so closely guarded that the light in their cell is never turned off’.
Marcel’s desperate relationship with Albertine now represents the despair of compromise and the closing off of the seemingly endless possibilities of youth, as they become locked in a cycle of disappointment, mistrust and deceit that threatens to destroy both their identities.

The Penguin Proust is the first completely new translation of Proust’s masterwork since the 1920s. Under Christopher Prendergast’s general editorship, these superb editions bring us a more rich, comic, and lucid Proust than English readers have previously been able to enjoy.
(From the book-cover blurb)