From AudioFile
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



"Kundera has raised the novel of ideas to a new level of dreamlike lyricism and emotional intensity."



"Kundera is a virtuoso . . . A work of the boldest mastery, originality, and richness."



"Brilliant . . . A work of high modernist playfulness and deep pathos."


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


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


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


Book Description

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 private actions, but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine.


Language Notes
Text: English, Czech (translation)


The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
Novel by Milan Kundera, first published in 1984 in an English translation and in a French translation as L'Insoutenable Legerete de l'etre. In 1985 the work was published in the original Czech as Nesnesitelna lehkost byti, but it was banned in Czechoslovakia until 1989. Set against the background of Czechoslovakia in the 1960s, the novel concerns a young Czech physician who substitutes a series of erotic adventures over which he thinks he can maintain control for becoming involved in his country's politics, where he feels he can have no power or freedom. Inevitably, he is drawn into Czechoslovakia's political unrest. In a parallel vein, he is forced to choose among the women with whom he is involved.


About the Author
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.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"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 novel." "Controlled by day, Tereza's jealousy awakens by night, transformed into ineffably sad death-dreams, while Tomas, a successful surgeon, alternates loving devotion to the dependent Tereza with the ardent pursuit of other women. Sabina, an independent, free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals - of parents, husband, country, love itself - whereas her lover, the intellectual Franz, loses all because of his earnest goodness and fidelity." 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, says the novelist, "the unbearable lightness of being" - not only as the consequence of our private acts but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine.

FROM THE CRITICS

Jim Miller

Kundera has raised the novel of ideas to a new level of dreamlike lyricism and emotional intensity. —Newsweek

Elizabeth Hardwick

Kundera is a virtuoso . . . A work of the boldest mastery, originality, and richness. —Vanity Fair

Janet Malcolm

Brilliant . . . A work of high modernist playfulness and deep pathos. —New York Review of Books

AudioFile - Ted Hipple

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. ￯﾿ﾽ AudioFile, Portland, Maine

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