Milan Kundera

"Incites us to reflect on fiction and philosophy, knowledge and truth, and brilliantly illustrates the art of the essay." -- The New Republic"Every novelist's work contains an implicit vision of the history of the novel, an idea of what the novel is. I have tried to express the idea of the novel that is inherent in my own novels." -- Milan KunderaKundera brilliantly examines the evolution, construction, and essence of the novel as an art form through the lens of his own work and through the work of such important and diverse figures as Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne, Diderot, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Musil, Kafka, and perhaps the least known of all the great novelists of our time, Hermann Broch.Kundera's discussion of his own work includes his views on the role of historical events in fiction, the meaning of action, and the creation of character in the post-psychological novel.

Jacques and His Master is a deliciously witty and entertaining 'variation' on Diderot's novel Jacques le fataliste, written for Milan Kundera's 'private pleasure' in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. When the 'heavy Russian irrationality' fell on Czechoslovakia he felt drawn to the spirit of the eighteenth century - 'And it seemed to me that nowhere was it to be found more densely concentrated than in that banquet of intelligence, humour and fantasy, Jacques le Fataliste'. This translation by Simon Callow has delighted Kundera's admirers throughout the English-speaking world.

"Die Männer drehen sich nicht mehr nach mir um." Mit diesen Worten empfängt Chantal ihren Lebensgefährten nach seiner Rückkehr vom Sterbebett eines Freundes. Sie hat eine Nacht und einen Vormittag allein im Hotel verbracht. Er hat sie gesucht, am Strand in der Ferne erspäht und seine Liebeserklärungen in den Wind und die Wellen geschrien. Einige Zeit darauf erhält Chantal anonyme Liebesbriefe. Sie ist verwundert, beunruhigt, geschmeichelt, bis sie Jean-Marc als Absender entlarvt. Dieser belauscht ihre Reaktionen auf die Briefe des vermeintlichen Liebhabers. Die Liebe wird für beide zum Spiel auf Leben und Tod ...

Befriend a budding poet and his adoring mother in this seductive early novel - winner of the Prix Médicis - by the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.'An artist, clearly one of the greatest to be found anywhere.' Salman Rushdie'Kundera's achievement has been to bring both private life and political life into one comic framework.' Ian McEwanYoung Jaromil knows he is special; in fact, he is a poet bestowed with literary genius, heir to Rimbaud. He knows this because his adoring mother told him so.Adult Jaromil, still revelling in these truths, draws on his talents to find romance whilst making his mark on the world through both his poetry and advancing the Communist revolution.Son, Poet, Lover. In which of these roles does Jaromil's true existence lie?A blazingly satirical reflection on the 'lyrical age' of youthful innocence, this ironic epic of adolescence showcases Kundera's savage yet tender wit at its finest.

The New York Times bestseller by the author of modern classic The Unbearable Lightness of Being.'Like all great writers, Kundera leaves indelible marks on his readers' imaginations.' Salman Rushdie From a playful gesture between an old woman in a swimming pool and a youthful lifeguard springs the heroine of a novel: Agnès. In the course of her daily life - Saturday chores, saunas, lunch in the hectic Paris streets - memories arise of her dead father, an unexpected widower. Their conversations flood back, and Agnès realises that her secret inheritance was his way of granting her freedom. As she mentally revisits her childhood, from formative loves to her intense relationship with her sister, her past casts light on her present: her marriage, daughter, and eventual death.Exploring identity and existence, eroticism and modernity - with cameos from Goethe, Dali, Hemingway, and beyond - Immortality illuminates the nature of selfhood with inimitable wit, grace and intellectual nimbleness. 'A serial feast, a banquet for the brain.' Observer'A joy to read. Wise, rueful, whimsically philosophical, Kundera teases the reader with provocations and paradoxes.' Evening Standard

This collection contains stories about the sport of love - Don Juanism, ageing, male and female power and seductions undertaken for all kinds of intriguing motives. Milan Kundera is author of "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting".

40th anniversary edition of the bestselling modern classic: Milan Kundera's iconic novel of love and politics in communist Czechoslovakia.'Shamelessly clever ... Exhilaratingly subversive and funny.' Independent'A modern classic ... As relevant now as when it was first published. ' John BanvilleA young woman is in love with a successful surgeon: a man torn between his love for her and his womanising. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals, while her other lover stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by choices and events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance and weight - and we feel 'the unbearable lightness of being'.Kundera's classic provoked a whole generation, encompassing passion and philosophy, body and soul, the Prague Spring and modern America, political acts and private desires, comedy and tragedy - in fact, all of human existence.What readers are saying:'Some books change your mind, some change your heart, the very best change your whole world ... A mighty piece of work, that will shape your life forever.''One of the best books I've ever read ... A book about love and life, full of surprises. Beautiful.''This book is going to change your life ... It definitely leaves you with a hangover after you're done reading.''Kundera writes about love as if in a trance so the beauty of it is enchanting and dreamy ... Will stay with you.'

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".

Die im Buch der lächerlichen Liebe versammelten Erzählungen sind noch in den sechziger Jahren in Prag entstanden. In seinen Erzählungen spannt Kundera die komischsten Paare zusammen, die schließlich in grotesken Situationen die Absurdität unserer Beziehungen erkennen müssen. Das Buch der lächerlichen Liebe erzählt von den in Sehnsüchte und Begierden verstrickten Helden mit dem Witz und der Passion, die Milan Kundera berühmt gemacht haben. ?Dann war alles vorbei. Der junge Mann löste sich von der jungen Frau, griff nach der langen Schnur über dem Bett und löschte das Licht. Er wollte ihr Gesicht nicht sehen. Er wußte, daß das Spiel aus war, hatte aber keine Lust, in das gewohnte Verhältnis zurückzukehren; er fürchtete diese Rückkehr. Er lag neben ihr im Dunkeln, und zwar so, daß ihre Körper sich nicht berührten.?

"An intellectual heavyweight and a pure literary virtuoso, Milan Kundera takes some of Freud's most cherished complexes and irreverently whirls them about in acts of legerdemain that capture our darkest, deepest human passions. . . . The tales in Laughable Loves surprise and illuminate. . . . Kundera's world is complex, full of mockeries and paradoxes. Life is often brutal and humiliating; it is often blasphemous, funny, irritating." -- Cleveland Plain DealerMilan Kundera is a master of graceful illusion and illuminating surprise. In one of these stories a young man and his girlfriend pretend that she is a stranger he picked up on the road--only to become strangers to each other in reality as their game proceeds. In another a teacher fakes piety in order to seduce a devout girl, then jilts her and yearns for God. In yet another girls wait in bars, on beaches, and on station platforms for the same lover, a middle-aged Don Juan who has gone home to his wife. Games, fantasies, and schemes abound in all the stories while different characters react in varying ways to the sudden release of erotic impulses.

A philosophical masterpiece by the author of modern classic The Unbearable Lightness of Being.'An artist, clearly one of the best to be found anywhere.' Salman Rushdie'Kundera designs fictions of the highest order.' Ian McEwanChantal awaits her partner in a hotel on the Normandy coast, struggling to find him on a crowded beach. After mistaking him for a stranger, they reunite, and she reveals her fears of men no longer turning to look at her. Soon, she begins to receive mysterious love letters, which she hides in her underwear drawer - but as the border between fantasy and reality blurs, perhaps the secret correspondent is someone closer to her than she realises?In this disquieting love story, Kundera reveals our shifting perceptions of selfhood over time, especially within the intimacy of a relationship - and makes us question our own existence.

"An absolutely dazzling entertainment. . . . Arousing on every level--political, erotic, intellectual, and above all, humorous." --Newsweek"The Book of Laughter and Forgetting calls itself a novel, although it is part fairy tale, part literary criticism, part political tract, part musicology, and part autobiography. It can call itself whatever it wants to, because the whole is genius." --New York TimesRich in its stories, characters, and imaginative range, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is the novel that brought Milan Kundera his first big international success in the late 1970s. Like all his work, it is valuable for far more than its historical implications. In seven wonderfully integrated parts, different aspects of human existence are magnified and reduced, reordered and emphasized, newly examined, analyzed, and experienced.

"Kundera, master of the twosome, finds erotic and existential threads everywhere in daily behavior. Like his previous books, Identity is a cluster of jeweled observations. . . . But Identity has a special charm: suspense. . . . It] gets us turning the pages in excitement and alarm, and Kundera's wit keeps us turning them to the very end." -- San Francisco ChronicleIn a narrative as intense as it is brief, a moment of confusion sets in motion a complex chain of events which forces the reader to cross and recross the divide between fantasy and reality.Sometimes--perhaps only for an instant--we fail to recognize a companion; for a moment their identity ceases to exist, and thus we come to doubt our own. The effect is at its most acute in a couple, where our existence is given meaning by our perception of a lover, and theirs of us.With his astonishing skill at building on and out from the significant moment, Milan Kundera has placed such a situation and the resulting wave of panic at the core of this novel. Hailed as a "a fervent and compelling romance, a moving fable about the anxieties of love and separateness" (Baltimore Sun), it is not to be missed.

A dazzling tragicomic tale from the author of modern classic The Unbearable Lightness of Being.'Anyone reading Kundera's books is unlikely to forget them. They have an essential energy, a difference.' New Statesman'Kundera is a self-confessed hedonist in a world beset by politics . . . Marvellous.' Salman RushdieKlima, a celebrated jazz trumpeter, learns that a young nurse with whom he spent one brief night at a fertility spa is pregnant - and she has decided he is the father.Thus begins a whirlwind farce as he returns to the spa: an accelerating dance which unfolds over five madcap days, encompassing Klima's jealous wife, the nurse's equally jealous boyfriend, a fanatical gynaecologist, a rich American (at once Don Juan and saint) and an elderly political prisoner who is holding a farewell party before emigration.Posing serious philosophical questions with his inimitable blasphemous lightness, Farewell Waltz is perhaps the most purely entertaining of Kundera's novels, rich in black humour and profound human insights.

"After Farewell Waltz there cannot be any doubt. Kundera is a master of contemporary literature. This novel is both an an example of virtuosity and a descent into the human soul." --L'UniteSet in an old-fashioned Central European spa town, Farewell Waltz poses the most serious questions with a blasphemous lightness that makes us see that the modern world has deprived us even of the right to tragedy.In this dark farce of a novel, eight characters are swept up in an accelerating dance: a pretty nurse and her repairman boyfriend; an oddball gynecologist; a rich American (at once saint and Don Juan); a popular trumpeter and his beautiful, obsessively jealous wife; and an disillusioned former political prisoner about to leave his country and his young woman ward. It is perhaps the most brilliantly plotted and sheer entertaining of Milan Kundera's novels.Written in Bohemia in 1969-70, the book was first published (in 1976) in France under the title La valse aux adieux (Farewell Waltz), and later in thirty-four other countries. This beautiful translation, made from the French text prepared by the novelist himself, fully reflects Kundera's own tone and intentions, and offers an opportunity for both the discovery and the rediscovery of one of the very best of a great writer's works.

"Irresistible. . . . Slowness is an ode to sensuous leisure, to the enjoyment of pleasure rather than just the search for it." -- MirabellaMilan Kundera's lightest novel, a divertimento, an opera buffa, Slowness is also the first of this author's fictional works to have been written in French.Disconcerted and enchanted, the reader follows the narrator of Slowness through a midsummer's night in which two tales of seduction, separated by more than two hundred years, interweave and oscillate between the sublime and the comic. Underlying this libertine fantasy is a profound meditation on contemporary life: about the secret bond between slowness and memory, about the connection between our era's desire to forget and the way we have given ourselves over to the demon of speed. And about "dancers" possessed by the passion to be seen, for whom life is merely a perpetual show emptied of every intimacy and every joy.

Readers are taken through a midsummer's night in which two tales of seduction, separated by more than 200 years, interweave and oscillate between the sublime and the ridiculous. They provide merely a narrative framework for Kundera's novel, within which is condensed existential analysis.

"A defense of fiction and a lesson in the art of reading." --New York Times Book Review"Testaments Betrayed is to be savored paragraph by paragraph. . . . It must be purchased, read, pondered, and argued within the margins. And frequently reread." -- Washington PostA brilliant and thought-provoking essay from one of the twentieth century's masters of fiction, Testaments Betrayed is written like a novel: the same characters appear and reappear throughout the nine parts of the book, as do the principal themes that preoccupy the author. Kundera is a passionate defender of the moral rights of the artist and the respect due a work of art and its creator's wishes. The betrayal of both--often by their most passionate proponents--is one of the key ideas that informs this strikingly original and elegant book.

'A masterpiece' (Salman Rushdie) by the author of modern classic The Unbearable Lightness of Being.'It took the temperature of the age as no other book did. It was the great novel of the end of European Communism: a novel of ideas and eroticism, the surreal and the naturalistic.' Howard Jacobson'One is torn between profound pleasure in the novel's execution and wonder at the pain that inspired it.' Ian McEwan One freezing day in 1948, Klement Gottwald addresses Prague, wearing his comrade Clementis' fur cap - and Communist Czechoslovakia is born. But after being hanged for treason, Clementis is airbrushed out of propaganda photographs. All that remains is a bare wall, and his cap. So begins an unforgettable voyage through seven narratives, interspersed with luminous meditations on politics, philosophy, music and history.A dissident seeks his first lover - now a Party loyalist - to persuade her to return his romantic letters. A married couple manages their ménage-à-trois as Mother moves in. A clandestine horoscope writer is questioned. An émigré widow struggles to reconstruct memories of her late husband, before finding herself on an island of children. A butcher's wife embarks on an affair with a poetic student. And one man prepares to cross the border . . . What readers are saying:'Kundera embrace politics, sex, philosophy and history, with a seen-it-all cynicism that nevertheless manages to be fascinating and even uplifting ... It was addictive and fun, sexy and cool, easy to read, and made me feel brighter, switched on, and more alive.''You must read this novel. Can't tell you about it, you just have to do it yourself. Its bonkers-brilliant! Phantasmagoric originality like this comes very seldom in a reader's so-sweet life.''Kundera's unique writing style comes as a revelation ... This holds a special place in my reading history as the one book that I instantly began re-reading as soon as I finished it.''Absolutely enchanted me. It's such an unique novel. It speaks of so many things, from communism and regimes to love and art. For me personally, it is a perfect book.''I am not going to spoil the story here, but while the story is not supernatural in any way, it takes on a fantastical flavor, full of mysteries and strange emotions ... It is obvious that Kundera has thought a lot about life, about the meaning of life, and lets the reader in on his secrets.''Such a unique writer, Kundera! What a way he has to shine the brightest light on the deepest corners of human psyche.'