Matthew Sweet gathers together four Proust fans from very different backgrounds - the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, Jane Smiley, the psychotherapist, Jane Haynes, Christopher Prendergast, who has a translation of the book and written Living and Dying with Marcel Proust, and from France, the writer, Marie Darrieussecq. The actor Peter Marinker tackles the difficult task of giving an English voice to Proust.

The novel In Search of Lost Time is a modernist masterpiece which offers a symphonic account of what it meant to be alive in France as the 19th century became the 20th.

Producer: Zahid Warley

You can find a collection of programmes on the Free Thinking website exploring different aspects of modernism around the world https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07p3nxh

On Sunday Nov 20th at 5.30pm and for a month afterwards BBC Radio 3's curated selection of Words and Music inspired by the writing of Proust will be available on BBC Sounds.