The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Milan Kundera

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Commissioned and closely monitored by Milan Kundera himself, this new translation brings a clarity and unmatched fidelity to the author's original text. Widely held as a work of genius, "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" is the novel that first brought him to the forefront of the international literary scene. Rich in stories, characters and imaginative range, it was written while Kundera was still forbidden to publish in his home country of Czechoslovakia, which was then behind the Iron Curtain. In seven wonderfully integrated parts, different aspects of modern existence -- from the posthumous erasure of "enemies" of communism from the historical record, to the subtle agony of the fading memory of a lost love, to the bizarre sexlessnes of modern promiscuity -- are explored with boldness, subversive humor and the magical power of fiction.

Book Details

Publisher: Harper Perennial
Publish Date: Apr 7th, 1999
Pages: 320
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 7.90in - 5.20in - 0.90in - 0.55lb
EAN: 9780060932145
Categories: • Literary• Classics• Humorous - Dark Humor

About the Author

Kundera, Milan: -

The Franco-Czech novelist Milan Kundera (1929-2023) was born in Brno and lived in France, his second homeland, since 1975 until his death. He is the author of the novels The Joke, Life Is Elsewhere, Farewell Waltz, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Immortality, and the short story collection Laughable Loves--all originally in Czech. His more recent novels, Slowness, Identity, Ignorance, and The Festival of Insignificance, as well as his nonfiction works, The Art of the Novel, Testaments Betrayed, The Curtain, and Encounter, were originally written in French.

Praise for this book

"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 Times

"This book, as it bluntly calls itself, is brilliant and original, written with the purity and wit that invite us directly in." -- John Updike

"A masterpiece." -- Salman Rushdie

"An absolutely dazzling entertainment. . . . Arousing on every level--political, erotic, intellectual, and above all, humorous." -- Newsweek

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