Letters to the Lady Upstairs

Marcel Proust is the one of the world's most famous writers. Renowned for his epic novel in seven volumes, In Search of Lost Time, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest novelists of all time. He lived at 102 Boulevard Haussman between 1907 and 1919 and died in 1922.Lydia Davis is a prize-winning translator of French literature and the author of one novel and six short-story collections. She won the Man Booker International Prize in 2013.

‘A collection of letters to the neighbours about noise would seem unpromising material for a book, unless they were written by Marcel Proust, who was so sweet, kind, funny and charming, that his letters are a delightful surprise’ ***** Daily Telegraph‘A delight. This slim book is special, not only because it reveals details of Proust’s life, but also in its simple celebration of friendship’ Observer‘Translator Lydia Davis … reveals Proust’s brilliant, darting mind at work in an unfettered, conversational manner’ Arts Desk‘Nearly as famous as Marcel Proust’s madeleine is his cork-lined bedroom at 102 Boulevard Haussmann, where he lay in bed and wrote most of A la Recherche du temps perdu … Letters to the Lady Upstairs gives us an oblique portrait of this closeted life.’ Times Literary Supplement‘A haunting portrait of a friendship both evanescent and intense between two people who lived within earshot of one another, separated only by a few inches of plaster and floorboard, but who scarcely ever met’ New Statesman‘Full of wit and playful decorum’ New Yorker‘A trove of charming correspondence from literature’s most famous “noise phobic”’ Kirkus