• Title: Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp
• Author: Józef Czapski
• Genre/Subject: Literary criticism
• Publisher: NYRB
• Publication Date: 1987
• Start date: 5/16/2022
• Finish date: 5/19/2022

Review:

What a little jewel this is. Just a lucky find on Amazon based on my previous browsing.

From memory, without access to the books, this remarkable Polish officer delivered a series of erudite and passionate lectures on Proust and his great novel. While locked up in a Soviet P.O.W. camp that was deplorably bad by all accounts.

This really resonated for me as I know personally the importance of intellectual stimulation when one is incarcerated. Reading in prison not only offers an escape from your everyday reality, but it reminds you that there is a world out beyond the bars. A world of beauty and sunshine and experiences waiting for you.

I learned a lot more about Proust the man, and how his own life was transposed into the novel.

5 stars fo sho.