All too often, this brilliant novel of thwarted love and revenge miscarried has been read for its political implications. Now, a quarter century after "The Joke" was first published and several years after the collapse of the Soviet-imposed Czechoslovak regime, it becomes easier to put such implications into perspective in favor of valuing the book (and all Kundera 's work) as what it truly is: great, stirring literature that sheds new light on the eternal themes of human existence.
The present edition provides English-language readers an important further means toward revaluation of "The...
All too often, this brilliant novel of thwarted love and revenge miscarried has been read for its political implications. Now, a quarter century after...
In this dark farce of a novel, set in an old-fashioned Central European spa town, eight characters are swept up in an accelerating dance: a pretty nurse and her repairman boyfriend; an oddball gynecologist; a rich American (at once saint and Don Juan); a popular trumpeter and his beautiful, obsessively jealous wife; an disillusioned former political prisoner about to leave his country and his young woman ward.Perhaps the most brilliantly plotted and sheer entertaining of Milan Kundera's novels, Farewell Waltz poses the most serious questions with a blasphemous lightness that makes...
In this dark farce of a novel, set in an old-fashioned Central European spa town, eight characters are swept up in an accelerating dance: a pretty ...
The author initially intended to call this novel The Lyrical Age. The lyrical age, according to Kundera, is youth, and this novel, above all, is an epic of adolescence; an ironic epic that tenderly erodes sacrosanct values: childhood, motherhood, revolution, and even poetry. Jaromil is in fact a poet. His mother made him a poet and accompanies him (figuratively) to his love bed and (literally) to his deathbed. A ridiculous and touching character, horrifying and totally innocent ("innocence with its bloody smile" ), Jaromil is at the same time a true poet. He's no creep, he's...
The author initially intended to call this novel The Lyrical Age. The lyrical age, according to Kundera, is youth, and this novel, above a...
Milan Kundera is a master of graceful illusion and illuminating surprise. In one of these stories a young man and his girlfriend pretend that she is a stranger he picked up on the road--only to become strangers to each other in reality as their game proceeds. In another a teacher fakes piety in order to seduce a devout girl, then jilts her and yearns for God. In yet another girls wait in bars, on beaches, and on station platforms for the same lover, a middle-aged Don Juan who has gone home to his wife. Games, fantasies, and schemes abound in all the stories while different characters react...
Milan Kundera is a master of graceful illusion and illuminating surprise. In one of these stories a young man and his girlfriend pretend that she i...
In seven independent, but closely related chapters, the author presents his personal conception of the European novel, which he describes as 'an art born of the laughter of God'.
In seven independent, but closely related chapters, the author presents his personal conception of the European novel, which he describes as 'an art b...
In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. This magnificent novel juxtaposes geographically distant places; brilliant and playful reflections; and a variety of styles to take its place as perhaps the major achievement of one of the world's truly great writers.
In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his...
From the internationally acclaimed, bestselling author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, an unexpected and enchanting novel--the culmination of his life's work.
Casting light on the most serious of problems and at the same time saying not one serious sentence; being fascinated by the reality of the contemporary world and at the same time completely avoiding realism--that's The Festival of Insignificance. Readers who know Milan Kundera's earlier books know that the wish to incorporate an element of the -unserious- in a novel is not at all unexpected of him. In...
From the internationally acclaimed, bestselling author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, an unexpected and enchanting novel--the culmi...
Die in diesem Buch versammelten Erzählungen sind noch in den sechziger Jahren in Prag entstanden. In seinen Erzählungen spannt Kundera die komischsten Paare zusammen, die schließlich in grotesken Situationen die Absurdität unserer Beziehungen erkennen müssen. "Das Buch der lächerlichen Liebe" erzählt von den in Sehnsüchte und Begierden verstrickten Helden mit dem Witz und der Passion, die Milan Kundera berühmt gemacht haben.
Die in diesem Buch versammelten Erzählungen sind noch in den sechziger Jahren in Prag entstanden. In seinen Erzählungen spannt Kundera die komischst...
Die verschlungene Liebesgeschichte zwischen Tomas und Teresa gibt den Rahmen ab fr einen der witzigsten und intelligentesten Romane der vergangenen Jahre, der zugleich Leselust und hchste intellektuelle Ansprche befriedigt.
Die verschlungene Liebesgeschichte zwischen Tomas und Teresa gibt den Rahmen ab fr einen der witzigsten und intelligentesten Romane der vergangenen Ja...
Encounter is the latest addition to the acclaimed body of literary criticism from beloved author Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting). Novelist Russell Banks writes, "Not since Henry James, perhaps, has a fiction writer examined the process of writing with such insight, authority, and range of reference and allusion." In Encounter, Kundera brilliantly reflects on some of his signature themes and old loves (Rabelais, Fellini, Janacek, Malaparte), on literature, on morality, and on the transformation of civilization as...
Encounter is the latest addition to the acclaimed body of literary criticism from beloved author Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being<...
