How Proust Can Change Your Life

Alain de Botton combines two unlikely genres--literary biography and self-help manual--in the hilarious and unexpectedly practical How Proust Can Change Your Life.

Who would have thought that Marcel Proust, one of the most important writers of our century, could provide us with such a rich source of insight into how best to live life? Proust understood that the essence and value of life was the sum of its everyday parts. As relevant today as they were at the turn of the century, Proust's life and work are transformed here into a no-nonsense guide to, among other things, enjoying your vacation, reviving a relationship, achieving original and unclichéd articulation, being a good host, recognizing love, and understanding why you should never sleep with someone on a first date. It took de Botton to find the inspirational in Proust's essays, letters and fiction and, perhaps even more surprising, to draw out a vivid and clarifying portrait of the master from between the lines of his work.

Here is Proust as we have never seen or read him before: witty, intelligent, pragmatic. He might well change your life.

"It's a real pleasure to read someone who treats this sacrosanct subject as something that is still vital and vigorous." Publishers Weekly

"[A] delightfully original work of literary criticism.... By characterizing In Search of Lost Time with amusing superficiality, he has succeeded in showing us some of the novel's greatest depths." Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times Book Review

"Funny and very refreshing." San Francisco Chronicle

"Curious, humorous, didactic and dazzling.... It contains more human interest and play of fancy than most fiction." The New Yorker

"Erudite....After reading de Botton's book, one will savor Proust with fresh wonder and gratitude." The Washington Post

"A lively, original guide to living, and... an engaging introduction to the life and letters of one of the century's most interesting fictional thinkers... literary criticism wearing its slyest disguise since Julian Barnes's Flaubert's Parrot." Cleveland Plain Dealer

"One of my favorite books of the year.... Seriously cheeky, cheekily serious." Julian Barnes

"A witty, elegant book that helps us learn what reading is for." Doris Lessing

As relevant today as they were at the turn of the century, Proust's life and work are transformed here into a no-nonsense guide to, among other things, enjoying your vacation, reviving a relationship, achieving original and uncliched articulation, being a good host, recognizing love, and understanding why you should never sleep with someone on a first date. It took de Botton to find the inspiration in Proust's essays, letters, and fiction and, perhaps even more surprising, to draw out a vivid and clarifying portrait of the master from between the lines of his work.

Alain de Botton was born in 1969. He is the author of the novels On Love, The Romantic Movement, and Kiss and Tell; his work has been translated into sixteen languages. He lives in Washington, D.C., and London.

Read an exclusive essay by Alain de Botton