Milan Kundera

In one of the finer modern ironies of the life-imitates-art sort, the country that Kundera seemed to be writing about when he talked about Czechoslovakia is, thanks to the latest political redefinitions, no longer precisely there. This kind of disappearance and reappearance is, partly, what Kundera explores in The …

Olemisen sietämätön keveys on tšekkiläisen kirjailijan Milan Kunderan menestysteos vuodelta 1984. Romaani sisältää runsaasti filosofisia termejä ja pohdintaa. Sen keskeisinä käsitteinä esiintyvät elämän ”paino” ja ”keveys”. Teos on ilmestynyt suomeksi Kirsti Sirasteen kääntämänä, WSOYn kustantamana 1985. …

All too often, this brilliant novel of thwarted love and revenge miscarried has been read for its political implications. Now, a quarter century after The Joke was first published and several years after the collapse of the Soviet-imposed Czechoslovak regime, it becomes easier to put such implications into perspective …

A New York Times Notable Book Irena and Josef meet by chance while returning to their homeland, which they had abandoned twenty years earlier. Will they manage to pick up the thread of their strange love story, interrupted almost as soon as it began and then lost in the tides of history? The truth is that after …