<i>Sodom and Gomorrah</i> opens a new phase of <i>In Search of Lost Time</i>. While watching the pollination of the Duchess de Guer-mantes's orchid, the narrator secretly observes a sexual encounter between two men. “Flower and plant have no conscious will,” Samuel Beckett wrote of Proust's representation of sexuality. “They are shameless, exposing their genitals. And so in a sense are Proust's men and women . . . shameless. There is no question of right and wrong.”<br><br>For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin's acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff's translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of <i>Á la recherché du temps perdu</i> (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989).