In Search of Lost Time - Volume 4: Sodom and Gomorrah - Marcel Proust

In this fourth volume of his masterwork, Proust explores homosexual love - male and female - and dwells on how destructive sexual jealousy can be for those who suffer it. Sodom and Gomorrah is also an unforgiving analysis of both the decadent high society of Paris and the rise of a philistine bourgeoisie that is on the way to supplanting it. Characters reappear in a different light and take centre stage, notably Albertine, with whom the narrator believes he is in love, and the insanely haughty Baron de Charlus.

'Oh if I could write like that!' - Virginia Woolf