Like the much-praised (little-read?)Book of Laughter and Forgetting
(1980): another Kundera collage - part narrative, part speculative,
combining erotic, political, and metaphysical elements. The
philosophical frame is quite shifty this time, moving from notion
to notion: consideration of the need for heaviness in existence
(lack of weight equates with anomie, lovelessness, terror); kitsch;
relations with animals; a theory of Paradise based on the denial of
excrement. And, in these scattered sections, Kundera seems more
often coy than profound, his apothegms usually verging on the
commonplace. ("A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot
be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that
set the limits of human possibility, describe the boundaries of
human existence.") On the other hand, interest quickens whenever
Kundera turns to his narrative: the plight of a disenfranchised
Prague surgeon, Tomas, and his photographer-lover, Tereza -
mirrored by a Western couple, Swiss professor Franz and his
painter-mistress, Sabina. Both couples are involved in oblique
investigations of the spirituality and freedom of sex - as tested
against the lack of spirit and freedom in the world at large.
There's one powerfully touching, thoughtfully charged section
rendering the death of Tomas and Tereza's old dog; the prose offers
a few luminescent touches that are quintessential Kundera. ("Then
he pulled off her panties and she was completely naked. When her
soul saw her naked body in the arms of a stranger, it was so
incredulous that it might as well have been watching the planet
Mars at close range.") But, apart from these moments, the book
generates little accumulating power: the oddness of its format
requires great reader-patience - a patience that's rewarded only
with evasive suggestion. And though Kundera's seriousness and
natural grace are everywhere, they are finally beetled by the
feckless anemia of the collage/pastiche approach. (Kirkus Reviews)
The bestselling modern classic, Milan Kundera’s iconic novel of love and politics in communist Czechoslovakia.
A 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’.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being encompasses passion and philosophy, infidelity and ideas, the Prague Spring and modern America, political acts and private desires, comedy and tragedy – in fact, all of human existence.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
