Marcel Proust

Proust was a homosexual and was one of the first European novelists to write on the subject of homosexuality.

The writer was deeply affected by the death of his mother in September 1905.

After the death of his mother, his health began to deteriorate and he spent the last three years of his life in his cork-lined bedroom.

Marcel Proust was born as Valentin-Louis-Georges-Eugene-Marcel Proust to Achille Adrien Proust, a famous doctor in Paris.

He was just nine when he had a serious asthma attack. After the incident, his parents were extremely careful about his health and did not allow him to attend school as a regular student initially.

In 1882, he attended the Lyc�e Condorcet School but his education was again interrupted due to illness. Nevertheless, he received an award for displaying extraordinary skills in literature in the final year.

Proust served in the French army from 1889 to 1890, during which he was stationed at the Coligny Barracks in Orl�ans. From 1890 to 1891, he contributed columns to the journal ‘Le Mensuel’.

He was also one of the founding members of the literary periodical called ‘Le Banquet’ in which he published a number of articles.

In 1896, he published his first book titled, ‘Les Plaisirs et les Jours’, which comprised a collection of essays, short stories and poems.

Proust tried to write a novel but did not succeed and began translating and interpreting the works of the English art historian, John Ruskin.

The year 1908 proved beneficial for him as he began writing satires on the works by other writers, all of which were published in the daily newspaper ‘Le Figaro’.

His masterpiece ‘� la recherche du temps perdu’, translated as ‘In Search of Lost Time’ in English, was called the “greatest novel of the 20th century” by Graham Greene, and “greatest fiction to date” by W. Somerset Maugham.