Zombie Proust

PRIX CELESTE 2001

"Marcel Proust passed away on the 18th of November. It was 1922. One day, I could no longer resist: I went in search of him.

"I prowled about, I visited the rooms where he had lived, I caught glimpses of abandoned chateaus and haunted places, I walked in his footsteps. I wanted to see what his eyes had seen. I looked at his photographs, I uncovered relics and little treasures. I tried to find out who he had been in life, what he had really been like. I interrogated those among the dead who could still reply: his friends, his confidants, those who had crossed paths with him.

"Who was he? The dandy who set out for salons as though on a foreign expedition? Or the invisible man who flinched from the light, the character in a thriller? The brilliant writer was concealing a doppelganger, and I pursued him as though tracking down a missing relative." - Jerome Prieur