{"schema_version":"bf_book_companion_v1","release_id":"20260417T232332Z","book":{"amazon_purchase_url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/1681372584?tag=bookfrontier-20","asin":"1681372584","authors":["Jozef Czapski","Eric Karpeles","Józef Czapski"],"book_id":"9781681372587","canonical_url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/lost-time-1681372584","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781681372587.jpg?v=20260417T232332Z%3A2026-04-17T23%3A23%3A32Z","description":"The first translation of painter and writer Józef Czapski's inspiring lectures on Proust, first delivered in a prison camp in the Soviet Union during World War II. During the Second World War, as a prisoner of war in a Soviet camp, and with nothing but memory to go on, the Polish artist and soldier Józef Czapski brought Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time to life for an audience of prison inmates. In a series of lectures, Czapski described the arc and import of Proust’s masterpiece, sketched major and minor characters in striking detail, and movingly evoked the work’s originality, depth, and beauty. Eric Karpeles has translated this brilliant and ­altogether unparalleled feat of the critical imagination into English for the first time, and in a thoughtful introduction he brings out how, in reckoning with Proust’s great meditation on memory, Czapski helped his fellow officers to remember that there was a world apart from the world of the camp. Proust had staked the art of the novelist against the losses of a lifetime and the imminence of death. Recalling that triumphant wager, unfolding, like Sheherazade, the intricacies of Proust’s world night after night, Czapski showed to men at the end of their tether that the past remained present and there was a future in which to hope.","forthcoming":false,"isbn13":"9781681372587","publication_date":"20181106","publisher":"New York Review Books","slug":"lost-time","subtitle":"Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp","title":"Lost Time"},"discovery":{"categories":{"all":[{"bisac_code":"LIT004150","confidence_band":"medium","label":"French Literary Criticism","score":0.7539,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LIT004110","confidence_band":"medium","label":"East European Literary Criticism","score":0.7485,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LIT004240","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Russian Lit Crit","score":0.7448,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"hint":[{"bisac_code":"LIT004150","confidence_band":"medium","label":"French Literary Criticism","score":0.7539,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LIT004110","confidence_band":"medium","label":"East European Literary Criticism","score":0.7485,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LIT004240","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Russian Lit Crit","score":0.7448,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"publisher":[{"bisac_code":"LCO018000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Speeches Collection","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"LIT004150","confidence_band":"high","label":"French Literary Criticism","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"LIT025010","confidence_band":"high","label":"Literature & History","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"}]},"genres":[{"label":"French Literary Criticism","score":0.7539,"slug":"french-literary-criticism"},{"label":"East European Literary Criticism","score":0.7485,"slug":"east-european-literary-criticism"},{"label":"Russian Lit Crit","score":0.7448,"slug":"russian-lit-crit"}],"reader_fit":["Good for readers who enjoy French Literary Criticism","Good for readers interested in short stories","Good for readers who enjoy French Literary Criticism and East European Literary Criticism."],"related_lists":[],"series":null,"similar_books":[{"authors":["Sarah Bakewell"],"book_id":"9781590514832","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781590514832.jpg?v=20260417T232332Z%3A2026-04-17T23%3A23%3A32Z","score":15.0845,"title":"How to Live","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781590514832"},{"authors":["David Bellos"],"book_id":"9780241954478","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780241954478.jpg?v=20260417T232332Z%3A2026-04-17T23%3A23%3A32Z","score":15.0471,"title":"The Novel of the Century","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780241954478"},{"authors":["Vivian Gornick"],"book_id":"9780807062234","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780807062234.jpg?v=20260417T232332Z%3A2026-04-17T23%3A23%3A32Z","score":14.2071,"title":"The End of the Novel of Love","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780807062234"},{"authors":["Gary Saul Morson"],"book_id":"9780674299184","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780674299184.jpg?v=20260417T232332Z%3A2026-04-17T23%3A23%3A32Z","score":13.6547,"title":"Wonder Confronts Certainty","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780674299184"},{"authors":["Clarence Brown"],"book_id":"9780142437575","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780142437575.jpg?v=20260417T232332Z%3A2026-04-17T23%3A23%3A32Z","score":13.6528,"title":"The Portable Twentieth-century Russian Reader","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780142437575"},{"authors":["Daniil Kharms","Antony Anemone","Peter Scotto","& 0 more"],"book_id":"9781618113726","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781618113726.jpg?v=20260417T232332Z%3A2026-04-17T23%3A23%3A32Z","score":13.6372,"title":"“i Am a Phenomenon Quite Out of the Ordinary”","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781618113726"},{"authors":["Isaiah Berlin","Henry Hardy","Aileen Kelly"],"book_id":"9780141442204","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780141442204.jpg?v=20260417T232332Z%3A2026-04-17T23%3A23%3A32Z","score":13.5942,"title":"Russian Thinkers","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780141442204"},{"authors":["Robert Zaretsky"],"book_id":"9780674970861","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780674970861.jpg?v=20260417T232332Z%3A2026-04-17T23%3A23%3A32Z","score":12.7732,"title":"Life Worth Living","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780674970861"}],"topics":[{"evidence_refs":["keyword:literary criticism"],"label":"Literary","score":0.0955,"slug":"literary"},{"evidence_refs":["phrase_map_match"],"label":"Book Club","score":0.0914,"slug":"book-club"},{"evidence_refs":["phrase_map_match"],"label":"Short Stories","score":0.0624,"slug":"short-story"},{"evidence_refs":["keyword:essays"],"label":"Essays","score":0.0469,"slug":"essays"}],"what_you_get":["Themes: Literary, Book Club, Short Stories.","Reading lane: French Literary Criticism and East European Literary Criticism.","Publisher: New York Review Books."]},"llm_signals":null,"source_presence":{"amazon":true,"book_detail":true,"goodreads":true,"llm_signals":false,"similarity_seed":true},"stats":{"amazon_ratings_count":0,"goodreads_ratings_count":858,"goodreads_reviews_count":160,"quality_score":0.9102}}