Unbearable Lightness Of Being [Paperback]

"Brilliant . . . A work of high modernist playfulness and deep pathos." -- -- Janet Malcolm, New York Review of Books

"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

"Kundera has raised the novel of ideas to a new level of dreamlike lyricism and emotional intensity." -- Jin Miller, Newsweek

"Kundera is a virtuoso...A work of the boldest mastery, originality, and richness." -- Elizabeth Hardwick, Vanity Fair

A young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing; one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover -- these are the two couples whose story is told in this masterful novel. 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.

The Franco-Czech novelist Milan Kundera was born in Brno and has lived in France, his second homeland, for more than twenty years.

He is the author of the novels The Joke, Life Is Elsewhere, The Farewell Party, The Books of Laughter and Forgetting, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Immortality, and the short story collection Laughable Loves--all originally written in Czech.

Like Slowness, his two earlier nonfiction works, The Art of the Novel and Testaments Betrayed, were originally written in French.

Jonathan Oliver employs a husky-voiced tone that proves the right match for this darkish story, one that requires of listeners a dollop of patience. Set first in Czechoslovakia, then in Switzerland, Kundera's story tells the sometimes laborious story of a womanizing Czech surgeon forced to flee the Russian invasion and take on menial roles, giving his passion for the flesh a slighly different perspective, as he is no longer a doctor but just a window-washer. His relationship with this current female-of-choice, the interesting and puzzling Tereza, is at the center of the novel. Oliver is good, very good, pausing with great effect, having just the right amount of low-key drama and contemplative musing in his narration. He's a good fit for a book that not everyone will like, but those who stay the course will generally be pleased they did. T.H. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.