Marcel Proust

Writer

From a well-to-do family, young Marcel Proust was a critic, translator and socialite in Paris at the turn of the century. After the deaths of his parents (in 1903 and 1905), Proust retreated from a busy social life to his notorious cork-lined room and worked the rest of his life on his masterpiece novel, A la Recherche du temps perdu (also known as Remembrance of Things Past, and more recently translated as In Search of Lost Time). The sprawling, autobiographical novel is considered one of the greatest works of French literature.

Other distinguished French writers include Voltaire, Emile Zola, Albert Camus and Denis Diderot.