Set against the backdrop of decadent Parisian high society and the rise of a conservative bourgeoisie that will supplant it, the author explores the theme of homosexual love and the destructive influence of sexual jealousy.

The titular "prisoner" is Albertine, the tall, dark orphan with whom Marcel had fallen in love at the end of Sodom and Gomorrah (volume 4). Albertine has moved in with Marcel in his family's apartment in Paris, where the pair have a seemingly limitless supply of money and are chaperoned only by Marcel's judgmental family servant, Françoise. Marcel, who worries obsessively about Albertine's relationships with other women, grows more and more irrational...