|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
by Frank Wedekind
|
by Milan Kundera
|
by Milan Kundera
|
by Milan Kundera
|
by Bernard Knox
|
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Product Description
From Amazon.com
Bypassing the question of whether you can ever go home again, Milan Kundera's Ignorance tackles instead what happens when you actually get there. Ignorance is the story of two Czechs who meet by chance while traveling back to their homeland after 20 years in exile. Irena, who fled the country in 1968 with her now-deceased husband Martin, returns to Prague only to find coldness and indifference on the part of her former friends. Josef, who emigrated after the Russian invasion, is back in Prague to fulfill a wish of his beloved late wife. As fate would have it, the two have met before in their former lives, and the before-skirted passionate encounter is now destined to transpire. However, as in the story of Odysseus, which this novel so deliberately parallels, every homecoming brings with it a conflicting set of emotions so powerful that one has to question whether the voyage is really worth the pain. Expertly tackling the philosophical and emotional themes of nostalgia, memory, love, loss, and endurance, Kundera continues to astound readers with his masterful ability to understand and articulate issues so central to the human condition. --Gisele Toueg
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
"Would an Odyssey even be conceivable today? Is the epic of return pertinent to our own time? When Odysseus woke on Ithaca's shore that morning, could he have listened in ecstasy to the music of the Great Return if the old olive trees had been felled and he recognized nothing around him?" Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being) continues to perfect his amalgam of Nietzschean aphorism and erotic tale-telling in this story of disappointing homecomings. The time is 1989 and the Communists have fallen in Prague. In the Paris airport, Irena, a Czech emigre, recognizes an ex-compatriot, Josef. More than 20 years ago, Josef almost seduced Irena in a Prague bar; the two chat and agree to meet again in Prague. Each is returning for a different reason. Irena, in 1968, fled the country with Martin, her husband, to escape the political pressure he was under. Martin is long dead, their children are grown and Irena is now being pressured to return to Prague by her Swedish lover, Gustaf, who has set up an office in the city. Josef, a veterinarian, also left the country after the Russian invasion, out of disgust. He is returning to the Czech Republic to fulfill a request from his recently deceased wife. Both discover new and annoying aspects of Prague (such as Kafka T-shirts) as well as old bitterness. When they meet, Josef neglects to tell Irena one fact: he doesn't really remember her. With elegant detachment and measured passion, Kundera once again shows himself the master of both the erudite and the carnal in this Mozartian interlude.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
"What are you still doing here?" Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
"What are you still doing here?" Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What do customers ultimately buy after viewing this item?
 |
64% buy the item featured on this page: Ignorance: A Novel CDN$ 10.91 |
 |
15% buy Unbearable Lightness Of Being CDN$ 12.78 |
 |
9% buy Immortality CDN$ 12.05 |
 |
7% buy Book Of Laughter & Forgetting CDN$ 12.78 |
Customer Reviews
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
Your Recent History
(What's this?)|
After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. |
