On the surface a traditional Bildungsroman describing the narrator's journey of self-discovery, this huge and complex book is also a panoramic and richly comic portrait of France in the author's lifetime, and a profound meditation on the nature of art, love, time, memory and death.

But for most readers it is the characters of the novel who loom the largest: Swann and Odette, Monsieur de Charlus, Morel, the Duchesse de Guermantes, Francoise, Saint-Loup and so many others - Giants, as the author calls them, immersed in Time.