Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (pronounce [maʁsɛl pʁust]) (July 10, 1871 – November 18, 1922) was a French novelist, essayist and critic, best known as the author of À la recherche du temps perdu (in English, In Search of Lost Time; earlier translated as Remembrance of Things Past), a monumental work of twentieth-century fiction published in seven parts from 1913 to 1927.