Swann's Way; as a GRAPHIC novel? Yes, indeed.

I found this very difficult to believe. There it was in the Library--a
so-called GRAPHIC novel---Swann's Way. I couldn't resist taking it out to investigate.

It is over 220 pages long. Each page has up to a dozen or more beautiful illustrations, with the (adapted) Proust text translated by Arthur Goldhammer. This is such a super book that I want to give credit to all those responsible. The text has been adapted by Stephane Heuet, and he has also done the drawings. The publisher is Liveright Publishing Corporation, a W.W. Norton Division.
The inside front and rear covers have a beautiful schematic map
of Paris. There are several pages devoted to small portraits of 70 of the characters and of the narrator's family; several pages of Glossary; and an interesting introduction by the translator.
It is quite a big book--format about 11 by nine inches: heavy, too.

Let me just quote from the blurb on the inside of the cover:
"Now in what the renowned translator Arthur Goldhammer says 'might be likened to a piano reduction of an orchestral score,' the French illustrator Stephane Heuet re-presents Proust in graphic form for anyone who has always dreamed of reading him but was put off by the sheer magnitude of the undertaking."

The work of illustration that is involved is enormous, and one wonders how the artist and adapter, who must have worked on the book for months, at least, and maybe years, found a publisher. And one wonders too how the publisher could assess what sort of a market existed for such an oddity, especially as one imagines that a book of this quality must represent a sizable investment for the publisher.

Goldhammer also makes the following point: "The ruthless compression required to squeeze Proust's expansive sentences into the confining frames of a graphic novel yields an unexpected benefit: it sheds a revealing light on the book's armature, on the columns, pillars, and arches that support the narrator's resurrected memories as the columns of the church in Combray support the stained glass and tapestries that transport visitors into the past they represent."

If you are in a big bookstore--look for it. It's a revelation.