Reddit mentions of Swann's Way: In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Eight hours, one hundred eleven comments and no one has said Proust?


Ok - you should read Proust.


Really, it's maybe the best novel, all time.
The Prendergast edited translation (starting with Lydia Davis' Swann's Way) is my preferred translation.
I know, it's 3,500 pages in 6 volumes. I know, it's 100 years old. I know, it's French. Very, very French.
But it is probably the best novel I have ever read and is worth it.


Not Proust? Already read Proust?

I love Ulysses, but Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is where to start with Joyce novels (assuming Dubliners out, since it's short stories). Very classic (in the early 20th century Modernist sense).


Not Joyce? Already read Joyce?

If you liked Joyce, consider Henry Roths' Call It Sleep the forgotten American Modernist masterpiece.
It stands alone, but also acts as the first volume of his later set, Mercy of a Rude Stream, which continues the story.
Best part? It took SIXTY YEARS for the second book to come out! AN ENTIRE LIFETIME! 1934 to 1994.
The whole thing keeps building and building. It's amazing and nobody reads it.


Not Henry Roth? Too obscure?


Tolstoy.
Tolstoy wrote the famous huge ones, which are great and readable, but he also did them in miniature.
Consider Hadji Murad for the mini version of War and Peace.


But really, the answer to Proust.

Google says this one.