Proustian Uncertainties

[A] haunting work...Friedlander has always imbued his scholarship with an acute literary sensibility...incisive and quizzical...[an] intimate and subtle book. -Wall Street Journal [A] superb new book...Friedlander, the great historian of Nazi Germany and the Jews and also the author of his own Proustian memoir, When Memory Comes, argues that Proust's narrator is a 'disembodied presence unlike that in any novel before,' and that it's the relation of that presence to Proust himself that makes the Recherche, with its biting social satire, so unique. -Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year The pleasure of [Proustian Uncertainties] comes from...the author unspooling thoughts and venturing theories collected over many years about a book he clearly loves...By taking a bird's-eye view of the novel, Friedlander notices continuities and contradictions that are hard to see from within the teeming thickets of Proust's prose. -Harper's [An] excellent volume about In Search of Lost Time and Proust himself. -Literary Hub [A] thought-provoking examination...[Friedlander] is a wise, enthusiastic guide to Proust. -Kirkus Reviews [Friedlander] meditates on the 'extraordinary pull' and hidden depths of Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu in this intriguing extended essay...Proust fans will enjoy these appreciative, personal peregrinations through 'one of the most important novels ever written.' -Publishers Weekly [A] personal and idiosyncratic reading of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time...impressive and will certainly draw in a curious literary readership. -Library Journal Saul Friedlander, whose work on memory has played a critical role in filling in the lacunae of recorded history, has turned his lens on the uses of memory in Proust's extraordinary record of time in books that remain timeless. -Maryanne Wolf, author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain and Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World Praise for Saul Friedlander: Friedlander describes his experiences in lean, graceful sentences; his language seems armored against the dissolution it describes. -New York Review of Books [Friedlander's] judgments are scrupulous and levelheaded. And he treats the historical controversies that have raged around so many of the topics he covers with untiring fair-mindedness...Friedlander succeeds in binding together the many different strands of his story with a sure touch. He has written a masterpiece that will endure. -New York Times Book Review [Friedlander's] intellectual discipline may be that of the historian but his writing is animated by the passion of memory that only his generation can fully express. -The Guardian