The Elephant in the Room

“Everyone has forgotten that I’m Jewish. Except me.”
Marcel Proust

100th anniversary of Proust’s death on 18 November 2022

New approach to Proust’s oeuvre seen from the angle of his Jewish identity and as a keen observer of the Dreyfus affair

An elegant essay by a brilliant stylist and notable Proust scholar

Even though being Jewish was central to Proust, he didn’t write about it for a long time. But that all changed with In Search of Lost Time. His most famous book is imbued with Jewishness from the first line of the first draft to the last note penned on the night of his death. Marcel Proust’s mother was Jewish and his father a Catholic; he himself was christened a Catholic but wasn’t observant. It was not until the Dreyfus affair captivated the French public for years that he became aware of the true extent of antisemitism in his country. In this brilliant essay, Andreas Isenschmid illustrates how In Search of Lost Time is also a highly differentiated history of Jewish assimilation in France – one that never quite succeeded.


“The most important book on Proust in recent decades.”
Michael Mar