384 pp. Spine and lettering darkened. Volume two only. Elegant black and silver papered boards rubbed. Paper begining to break up on foreedge of boards. Binding is sound and pages are clean. Printed on Aventuros paper. The blue and white patterned endpapers are intact and front pastedown is graced with the excellent bookplate of author, lawyer, and civil libertarian Osmond Kessler Fraenkel [1888-1983]. Translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff. Cities of the Plain is a translation of 'Sodome et Gomorrhe I' from the fourth part and and a portion of 'Sodome et Gomorrhe II' from the fifth part of Marcel Proust's continuous novel ' A la Recherche du Temps Perdu' (Remembrance of Things Past). 'This rubicund youth, with his blunt features, appeared for all the world to have a tomato instead of a head. A tomato exactly similar served as head to his twin brother. To the detached observer there is this attraction about these perfect resemblances between pairs of twins, that nature, becoming for the moment industrialised, seems to be offering a pattern for sale.'