Alain de Botton is the author of Essays in Love, The Romantic Movement, Kiss and Tell, How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Consolations of Philosophy, The Art of Travel, Status Anxiety, The Architecture of Happiness, The Pleasures and...

Whatever the merits of Proust's work, even a fervent admirer would be hard pressed to deny one of its awkward features: length.A novel in seven volumes, Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time is considered a major literary work of the...