Conversation with Eric Karpeles: Proust’s Musée imaginaire and Beyond

Event begins at 1pm PT / 2pm MT / 3pm CT / 4pm ET

Join us for an afternoon conversation with Eric Karpeles, author and painter, and Fereshteh Priou of the Proust Society of Greenwich. They will explore the rich visual imagination behind Proust’s work and the world of art that shaped his writing.

Whether you are a longtime admirer of À la recherche du temps perdu or simply curious about the interplay of literature and painting, all are welcome.

Painter, writer, and translator Eric Karpeles has given the Amon Carter Lecture on the Arts at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, the Weintraub Lecture on Polish Culture at Harvard, and the Frank Lecture in the Humanities at Yale. The author of Paintings in Proust (Thames & Hudson, 2008), he has spoken widely on the subject, having delivered the annual Proust lecture at the Center for Fiction in New York, addressed the Proust Society of America in San Francisco, and lectured on Proust at Great Meadow Prison under the aegis of Bennington College’s Prison Education Initiative. He is the translator of Proust’s Overcoat (Ecco Press, 2010). With the publication of three books, Karpeles presented Polish painter and writer Józef Czapski to English language readers: he has translated and introduced Czapski's Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp (New York Review Books, 2018), written a biography, Almost Nothing: The 20th Century Art and Life of Józef Czapski (New York Review Books, 2018), and written and designed a lavishly illustrated artist's monograph, Józef Czapski: An Apprenticeship of Looking (Thames & Hudson, 2019). Speaking on Czapski's life and art, he has appeared at the National Gallery, London, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, the New York Studio School and other venues across the US and Europe.

Fereshteh Priou is the founder of the Proust Society of Greenwich. Since 2007, she has led a monthly gathering of Proust enthusiasts devoted to the close reading and discussion of Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu. In June 2026, the group began its fifth reading of the novel and is currently reading the first volume. Fereshteh recently submitted her book, Odette and Marcel: Puzzles in Proust, to her editor and hopes to see it published next year. For more information about the Proust Society of Greenwich, visit  proustsociety.org.

Photo of Eric Karpeles by Dominique Nabokov