"Arresting. In its brevity and unity of plot it surpasses even his previous book, Slowness." -- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times

"Curiously absorbing, with a melancholy charm." -- Wall Street Journal

"[Kundera's] way of imagining himself into the minds of women in a state of love and desire is remarkable." -- Boston Globe

"A beguiling meditation on the illusions of self-image and desire....meant to be savored, pleasurably and thoughtfully, like a fine cognac." -- Time Out New York

"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, through love's dark night of the soul and out again into a precarious sunlight." -- San Francisco Chronicle

"Its allegory of love left me shivering with an ambiguous, indefinable, yet strong sense of evil." -- Washington Post Book World

"A fervent and compelling romance, a moving fable about the anxieties of love and separateness." -- Baltimore Sun

"A twisting, teasing labyrinthine story of detection." -- Times Literary Supplement

"Insightful. . . Kundera lucidly discloses the psychological obsessions of the two lovers and shows how these obsessions lead to repeated miscommunications between them." -- New York Times Book Review