Marcel Proust was a French novelist, literary critic, and essayist born in Paris in 1871. He is best known for his monumental novel À la recherche du temps perdu, which was published in seven volumes between 1913 and 1927. The work totals approximately 1.25 million words and is considered by critics and writers to be one of the most influential novels of the twentieth century. Proust died in Paris in 1922.