10 Greatest Unfinished Novels

Proust's talent is absolutely undeniably, considering he penned what some consider to be one of the finest novels ever written even though it remained unfinished at the time of his death. To some, it is the definite novel of the 20th century.

The novel is a meditation on the transition from the 19th into the modern 20th century, as told through the recollections, often involuntary, of an unnamed narrator.

Particularly famous is a passage involving the eating of a Madeleine cake dipped in tea; the experience triggers vivid recollections of childhood, effectively setting the seven volume novel off. Indeed, apart from its stature critically speaking, Proust's novel is monumental - seven volumes coming in at somewhere in the region of 4,200 pages.

It is difficult to overestimate the influence of Proust's unfinished novel on subsequent literature; it is the last of the great 19th century prose works and one of the first truly modern novels. Writers from Virginia Woolf to Vladimir Nabokov and beyond have noted their esteem of the book and it regularly appears in writers' top ten lists. All this despite being unfinished.