The Unbearable Lightness of Being
A Novel
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International Bestseller o Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction
"Far more than a conventional novel. It is a meditation on life, on the erotic, on the nature of men and women and love . . . full of telling details, truths large and small, to which just about every reader will respond." -- People
In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, acclaimed author Milan Kundera tells the story of two couples, 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. In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence, we feel "the unbearable lightness of being" not only as the consequence of our pristine actions but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine.
This magnificent novel, now available in a beautifully designed Harper Perennial Deluxe Edition with French flaps and deckle edged paper, is a story of passion and politics, infidelity and ideas, and encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy, illuminating all aspects of human existence.
About this Author
The Franco-Czech novelist and critic Milan Kundera was born in Brno and has lived in France, his second homeland, since 1975. He is the author of the novels The Joke, Farewell Waltz, Life Is Elsewhere, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Immortality, and the short-story collection Laughable Loves—all originally written in Czech. His most recent novels Slowness, Identity, and Ignorance, as well as his nonfiction works The Art of the Novel, Testaments Betrayed, The Curtain, and Encounter, were originally written in French.
Reviews
"Kundera has raised the novel of ideas to a new level of dreamlike lyricism and emotional intensity." -- Jim Miller, Newsweek
"Kundera is a virtuoso . . . A work of the boldest mastery, originality, and richness." -- Elizabeth Hardwick, Vanity Fair
"Brilliant . . . A work of high modernist playfulness and deep pathos." -- Janet Malcolm, New York Review of Books
"With cunning wit, and elegiac sadness, Milan Kundera, the celebrated Czechoslovak emigre writer, expresses the trap the world has become." -- New York Times Book Review
"Far more than a conventional novel. It is a meditation on life, on the erotic, on the nature of men and women and love . . . full of telling details, truths large and small, to which just about every reader will respond." -- People
"Encyclopaedic and epigrammatic, profound and playful, Kundera explores the intersection of the sublime and the ridiculous to give us an important chapter in the moral history of our time." -- Judges' citation, 1984 Los Angeles Times Book Prize
"The Unbearable Lightness of Being is both a love story and a novel of ideas. . . . Witty, seductive, serious . . . also full of feeling and enormously experienced in the tricky interplay of sex and politics. . . . One of the finest and most consistently interesting novelists in Europe or America, [Kundera] has a powerful tale to tell." -- Washington Post Book World
"A work of large scale and complexity, symphonically arranged. . . Political and philosophical, erotic and spiritual, funny and profound . . . There is no wiser observer now writing of the multifarious relations of men and women. . . . Kundera's intelligence is both speculative and playful. The Unbearable Lightness of Being is his best novel yet." -- Wall Street Journal
"I return to the book again and again. Teacher, touchstone, style guide." -- Taiye Selasi
"Kundera invents his own style. This novel achieves the most incredible literary fusion, blending myth, love story, musical score and political reflection. And it's this liberty that creates a reading experience that is at once intellectual and sensual. . . . I read it every year and I always find something different. It's an unclassifiable book: part novel, part treatise on philosophy and music, part essay. I don't think a lifetime will be enough to unravel its mystery." -- Leïla Slimani
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