Books That Changed Humanity #7

À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time, or previously translated as Remembrance of Things Past), published in seven volumes between 1913 and 1927, is the most prominent work of French novelist Marcel Proust.

James Grieve is a Visiting Fellow in French in the School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics. He has taught French language and literature at ANU since 1962; in more recent years, he has also taught in Translation Studies. In 2017, he may equal the record set by Immanuel Kant of teaching at the same university for fifty-five years. Among books he has translated from French are Robert Lacour-Gayet’s Histoire de l’Australie (1972), scholarly works on myrmecology, autism, trade in the Roman world, the origin of language, books for children and the first two parts of Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu (Canberra, 1982 and Penguin, London 2002, & Viking, New York 2004). His Dictionary of Contemporary French Connectors was published in 1996 (Routledge, London). At different times, he was for years the Research Secretary of the HRC and Assistant to the Director. He has published two novels for Young Adults, A Season of Grannies (UQP, 1987) and They’re Only Human (Allen & Unwin, 2004) and a novella, Something in Common (FinlayLloyd,
2010). He reviewed books for The Canberra Times for forty-seven years.