PASSION IN PROVENCE: Ben and Lee Alto follow Van Gogh’s 19th century path to Provence, hoping to find inspiration for their own lives and give their son, Misha, some insight into a world completely different from their own. They find art, of course, and a world of beautiful landscapes, warm temperatures, and, yes, wonderful food. But they also find a ghost of their past, and it’s not Vincent Van Gogh but a woman Ben once loved and a man, Zach, a well-known jazz musician, who teach them some hard lessons about art and life, as well as the art of life.
A SUMMER OF GOOD-BYES resonates with the warmth of France’s southern sun, famous artists, and violent conflicts. It’s a vital, romantic story filled with the tensions of love and marriage, sexual longing and family loyalty, and the struggle to live in the face of impending death and loss.
Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century. But since its original prewar translation, there has been no completely new version in English. Now, Penguin Classics brings Proust’s masterpiece to new audiences throughout the world, beginning with Lydia Davis’s internationally acclaimed translation of the first volume, Swann's Way.
Swann's Way is one of the preeminent novels of childhood: a sensitive boy's impressions of his family and neighbors, all brought dazzlingly back to life years later by the taste of a madeleine. It also enfolds the short novel "Swann in Love," an incomparable study of sexual jealousy that becomes a crucial part of the vast, unfolding structure of In Search of Lost Time. The first volume of the work that established Proust as one of the finest voices of the modern age — satirical, skeptical, confiding, and endlessly varied in its response to the human condition — Swann's Way also stands on its own as a perfect rendering of a life in art, of the past recreated through memory.