A brilliant intellectual and one of the luminaries of France's fleeting Belle Epoch, Marcel Proust would complete seven volumes for his masterwork In Search of Lost Time, the first of which, Swann's Way, tells the torrid love affair of Charles Swann and the beautiful but unfaithful Odette de Crecy. This initial installment in Proust's sprawling meditation on time and memory contains the infamous incident with the madeleine cake, where a simple snack transports the narrator to a time and place from long ago, a plot device that moves the story, while also establishing the overarching theme of involuntary memory.