Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust was a French novelist born during the Third Republic, raised in a bourgeois family with early access to Paris's most exclusive social circles.
Despite his celebrated social presence, he remained an outsider due to his Jewish heritage and homosexuality.
Increasingly withdrawing from society in the late 1890s, he adopted nocturnal habits, battling severe asthma throughout his life.
Driven by an intense fear of dying before completing his work, he dedicated himself with remarkable discipline to his sprawling masterpiece until his death in 1922, aged 51.
Today he is universally regarded as one of the twentieth century's greatest literary figures.
