Posted on June 29, 2001 at 12:00 p.m.

BIRMINGHAM, AL — ForeWord magazine has selected the book Marcel Proust: A Life by University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) French Professor William C. Carter, Ph.D., to receive the 2000 Editors’ Choice Prize for Non-Fiction. In addition, the book was named the Best Biography of 2000.

ForeWord magazine is written for the independent publishing and book selling industry. More than 800 books were considered for ForeWord’s Book of the Year awards. The Editor’s Choice Prize includes a $1,000 cash award. The prizes were presented June 2 during the BookExpo America conference in Chicago.

Marcel Proust: A Life, published by Yale University Press, is a comprehensive biography that examines the life of the early 20th century French writer Marcel Proust, who has been hailed as one of the great literary voices of the 20th century. Proust wrote the classic seven-book, 3,000 page novel In Search of Lost Time, known in English as Remembrance of Things Past.

Carter is an internationally known Proust scholar. Among his other books is The Proustian Quest, published in 1992. He was also project director and co-producer of the documentary film “Marcel Proust: A Writer’s Life,” which aired nationally on PBS in 1993 and won numerous awards.