My Book of the Century

For me, Proust's seven-volume novel, Remembrance of Things Past, indisputably remainsthe most unique artistic achievement of the twentieth century. It is a rare masterpiece ofmodern imagination-it equals Dostoevsky in fathoming the depths of evil, is comparablewith Tolstoy in its all-encompassing range of human passions of love and jealousy and amost brilliant portrayal of grief, passing time and decay. Remembrance of Things Past isalmost Shakespearean in its capacity to capture the psychological mystery of multipleselves which an individual carries within himself.

Proust is perhaps the only western writer of the century who was able to reach closestto the Vedantic perception of the self in the world as two faces of the same reality, onereflecting the other.

Apart from Proust's work, I would recommend William Faulkner's Wild Palms and ThomasMann's Doctor Faustus as two most poignant and profound novels of the twentieth century.

(Nirmal Verma is a Hindi novelist.)