Marcel Proust is one of the greatest French writers, the founder of modern psychological prose. His most significant work, the cycle of novels "In Search of Lost Time", the writer created for fourteen years. Each novel in the cycle is both a link in the chain of the entire story and an independent work. All seven books are united by the image of the narrator, waking up in the middle of the night and indulging in memories of his life. The present and the past, contemplation and recollection turn out to be timeless and unite into a single picture, laying the foundation for a new type of novel - the “stream of consciousness” novel.The second novel in the cycle, which tells the story of the transformation of a boy into a youth, brought Proust fame and was awarded the Prix Goncourt, France's highest literary award.