Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16782 in Books
• Published on: 1996-05-20
• Binding: Paperback
• 318 pages

Synopsis
Kundera whirls through comedy and tragedy towards his central question: how does a person, any person, live today? In constructing his answer, he writes of politics, sex, literature, modern man's alienation - and of their antidotes: laughter and forgetting.

Customer Reviews

Laugh, cry, forget, transcend
Seven stories intertwined by intent, fantasy and romance. Excellent and lean prose; epigrammatic, well-footed, lofty but not imposing.

If people didn't neurotically exhaust themselves reading crap they'd read Milan Kundera.

you wont forget this
This book was the best accident that ever happened to me. I picked it up because it was cheap and it stopped me reading Dean Koontz which can only be a good thing! It has a fractured, post modern narrative which leaps back and forth and the author brings into question who is writing and what is being created. The language he uses is amazing at times for it's sheer simplicity. The words seem to dance around each other - quite literally at times as in the chapter where the whole world begins to dance in a ring which floats off into the sky. Kundera owes a lot to Kafka although he seems to have a more optimistic outlook on life. He also reminds me at times of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as strange things begin to happen yet none of the characters notice anything strange! He creates fantastically interesting theories and perfect sentances. Read it.

Once again Kundera at his "Unbearable" best!
Simply brilliant!

Kundera once again keeps you quite literally captivated for 312 pages and then has you just asking for more.This is most certainly one of his best and altough not probably as well known as "Immortality" or "The unbearable lightness of being" it certainly earns the right to sit up there alongside them as a Kundera classic.Once again all the usual Kundera hallmarks are there,his passion for Prague and his country,the brilliantly interwinning themes and characters and most importantly the pain that inspires his writing.This truly is a most thought-provoking read and once again just leaves you wanting more!