The interconnectedness of space, place, modernity and desire in Proust has preoccupied critics from Georges Poulet to Sara Danius, but little attention has been granted to Proust's relationship to contemporary cultures of travel and to the theories of travel that evolved in the course of the twentieth century. Yet the striking overlap between his observation above and that of contemporary travel theorist, Jean-Didier Urbain, also establishes Proust as a time-traveller. In the period between Proust's and Urbain's aphoristic comments, writers as diverse as Georges Perec, Henri Michaux and cultural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss were, with differing inflections, pronouncing or implying ‘la fin des voyages’. With a sense of exhaustion of the possibilities of geographical exploration, each was calling for, or enacting, a form of virtual travel based on a freshness of perception, a willingness to see the world differently. As Urbain continues: