In the fifth published title of our Decadent Editions series, Christine Smallwood explores Chantal Akerman’s adaptation of Marcel Proust’s The Prisoner, the fifth volume of In Search of Lost Time, in a text that moves elegantly between Akerman’s films, Proust’s novel, and Smallwood’s own life.
‘Smallwood’s La Captive is a delightful, engrossing book. Her study of Chantal Akerman’s film is profound, entwining Akerman’s and Proust’s resonant themes: mothers and daughters and sons, love and loss, passion and passivity, freedom, obsession, and time. A beautiful, masterful work that miraculously marries art to life, life to art.’ Lynne Tillman
About the film
In Chantal Akerman’s contemporary adaptation of The Prisoner, the fifth volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, a wealthy young man lives with his girlfriend in his opulent Paris apartment. As obsession begets deceit inside the claustrophobic cage they call love, it becomes ever more difficult to distinguish the captive from the captor.
About the author
Christine Smallwood is the author of the novel The Life of the Mind and a regular contributor to publications such as The New York Review of Books, Harper’s, Bookforum and The New York Times Magazine. She is the recipient of the 2023 Anthony Veasna So Fiction Prize and a 2023 Silvers Grant.
Paperback | 192 Pages
