Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16886 in Books
• Published on: 1992-08-21
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Synopsis
This is the first novel by the author of "Immortality", which won "The Independent" Award for Foreign Fiction in 1991. Milan Kundera is also the author of "The Book of Laughter and Fogetting".

Customer Reviews

Deeply satisfying, a pleasure to read, a political work with vivid human undertones
This novel has all too often been highlighted for its political implications and its criticism of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia in the years leading up to the Prague Spring. Yet the messages and themes of the book go far beyond the specific circumstances in which it was written, and perhaps now, with the fall of the Iron Curtain and Communism in Europe fast fading from our collective memories, these eternal, human elements can be appreciated all the more. This is a story of lost faith, thwarted love, and misdirected revenge all brilliantly interwoven from the perspectives of a number of key protagonists.

"The Joke" of the novel's title refers in part to the major impulse that drives the main character, Ludvik Jahn. A postcard written satirically at the expense of the regime leads to his fall from grace, yet in his fall he finds happiness, only to lose it and become embittered, seeking vengeance against the system, the society, and the individuals that had robbed him of his place. This might seem ample ammunition for an author of Kundera's calibre, the simple message of resistance to totalitarianism through simple, human means: through resilience, through adultery. Needless to say, the failure of this resistance raises the question as to what the real joke is. Just the postcard? Or man's faith in the system (any system)? Perhaps the humility of life itself? Kundera leaves that to the reader to decide, and this openness contributes to making the novel a pleasure to read.

There is also a film adaptation produced in 1968 from director Jaromil Jires that is well worth a look, though its focus on Ludvik Jahn leaves the book feeling richer and more accurate in its message.

Finally it should be mentioned, as others have pointed out, that this edition marks the fifth and final version of the English translation of Zert, at least as far as Kundera is concerned. It captures not only the language but also the subtle moods and nuances, and even the syntax of the original, all elements askew in earlier revisions of the English translation, so for those with an older version of the work considering a re-read, this edition might also be worth the purchase.

"From whence a perfect joke must spring
A joke's a very serious thing."

So said the 18th-century English poet Charles Churchill in "The Ghost". And a silly joke was a very serious thing for Ludvik, the protagonist of Milan Kundera's first novel "The Joke."

Written and set in 1965 Prague and first published in Czechoslovakia in 1967, the novel opens with Ludvik looking back on the joke that changed his life in the early 1950s. Ludvik was a dashing, witty, and popular student. Like most of his friends he was an enthusiastic supporter of the still-fresh Communist regime in post-World War II Czechoslovakia. In a playful mood he writes a postcard to one of the girls in his class during their summer break. Since she seems, according to Ludvik, to be a bit too serious he writes on the postcard "Optimism is the opium of the people! The healthy atmosphere stinks! Long live Trotsky!" His colleagues and fellow young-party leaders did not quite see the humor in the sentiment expressed in the postcard. Ludvik finds himself expelled from the party and college and drafted to that part of the Czech military where alleged subversives form work brigades and spend the next few years working in mines.

Despite the interruption in his career Ludvik has become a successful scientist. But despite his success, his treatment at the hands of his former friends has left him bitter and angry. An opportunity arises when he meets Helena, an old friend now married to Pavel, the friend who led the efforts to purge Ludvik from the party. Ludvik decides to seduce Helena as a means of exacting his revenge. In essence this is the second `joke' of the novel. Although the seduction is successful things do not quite play out the way Ludvik expects, the novel's third joke' and he is left once more to sit and think bitter thoughts. Ultimately he decides that these sorts of jokes and their bitter repercussions are not the fault of the humans who set them in motion but are really just a matter of historic inevitability. Ultimately then one cannot blame forces that cannot be changed or altered.

Written in Czech (before Kundera left for France where he began writing in French) this is one of Kundera's more accessible works. The book is narrated through the voices of four people, Ludvik, Helena, Kostka, who has since become a Christian and absented himself from the commercial and political life of the regime, and Jaroslav whose love of traditional Czech folk music forms a nice counterpoint to life in 1960s Czechoslovakia. Kundera switches seamlessly from one voice to the next even as the changes in voice become more frequent towards the novel's conclusion. Although Ludvik is a bit self-absorbed that self-absorption is not nearly as all-consuming as one sees in the characters in Kundera's more recent efforts.

A word about the translation. There is an old French expression: "translations are like women - if they are beautiful, they are not faithful; if they are faithful they are not beautiful." This edition is designated by the publisher as the `definitive' translation. Kundera has expressed no small amount of dissatisfaction with earlier translations of this work and Kundera spent a lot of time working with the translator to ensure that the voice heard in the English version corresponds to the voice heard in the original Czech. Each reader may have a different opinion as to the beauty of the translated prose (I think it reads very well) but I think that given Kundera's blessing that it is, at the very least, faithful.

Kundera's first novel and masterpiece
Although my personal favourite of Kundera's novels is his 1991 'Immortality' (published a year before the 'definitive' English translation of 'The Joke'), this is the novel I would recommend to those uninitiated in the Czech writer's works.

Those who are familiar, on the other hand, with Kundera's later works (such as 'The Book of Laughter and Forgetting', 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' and 'Slowness') may breathe a sigh of relief at the absence of such techniques as abound in those novels. There is no intrusive narrator's voice, no 'magic realism', and the narrative itself is emotionally gripping, with few of the theoretical digressions that make the later novels such eccentric offerings.

Much of the narrative's charm derives from the beguiling figure of Ludvik, a kind of Czech 'superfluous man', who narrates his fall from favour in the his country's post-war communist regime.

To relate in a pedantic chronological fashion the events of this novel would be to distort the beauty of the narrative form, at which Kundera's imaginative genius is at its most direct.

Expect a moving analysis of the real 'human face' behind Communism, as well as devastating dramatisation of the humiliation of the culture of an entire country. Perhaps Kundera's greatest achievement is his delineation of the excruciating complexity of human agency, in which this novel might accurately be described as premeditating the more famous later works.

Nevertheless, this is as good a place to return to as to start from, and rereading it only reinforces one's impression of the beauty of the language.