The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel | Milan Kundera

The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel | Milan Kundera | An Amazing Novel

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The Unbearable Lig...

	The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel Milan Kundera Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 1999 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 241 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Of Life, Love, and Music.

What a magnificent piece of writing! Twenty years ago, I saw the movie and enjoyed it greatly. I remember a bittersweet love story set against the Russian invasion of Prague, an intense eroticism, and a haunting use of Janacek piano music. All these qualities are indeed found in the novel, but the movie is two-dimensional by comparison, able to do little more than hint at the richness of Kundera's thought, his unusual narrative structure, and his extraordinary use of the fourth dimension, time.

This is indeed a musical book, though its inspiration seems to be the kaleidoscopic style of the late Beethoven quartets, which mingle profundity with earthy humor. It consists of a number of separate movements, all covering much the same material, but from many different points of view. The story as such is almost irrelevant; all that is important in it has been told well before the half-way point. It is like having conversations with a number of friends, catching up with the doings of mutual acquaintances, but also talking about philosophy, politics, sexuality, and religion. Like all good conversations, each discussion is both stimulating and reassuringly familiar.

I don't know if this is conscious on Kundera's part, but he also seems to owe a strong debt to Voltaire's CANDIDE, in that the leading characters, after a life of sometimes violent political and erotic adventures, ultimately settle down to make their gardens grow. It makes for a touching ending, and a deeply satisfying one.

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An Amazing Novel

This is one of the most amazing works of literature I have ever read. Kundera offers the reader a lot of insight into the different nuances that people have. There are qualities in the characters that one may recognize in one's self, but these reflections are done in a remarkable way that make each character refreshing.

The novel is filled with obvious, and not so obvious, insights and wisdom that a reader could pull apart and think on. I keep a journal to document and reflect on books that I read, and this novel took a good number of pages.

I definitely recommend this to any reader looking for something deeper, and perhaps just looking for something interesting.

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Unbearable Lightness of Being?

Kundera's _Unbearable Lightness of Being_ was one of those assigned novels that I was sure that I would not like the minute I picked it up. Fortunately I was mistaken and found the book quite enjoyable. It was probably the dog, Karenina, who has to be euthanized at the end as she's suffering from cancer. It was also helped by a reference to Nietzsche's mysterious and obscure doctrine of the eternal return in the opening chapter, and NOT beginning with some pretentious Victorian social occasion, as most tedious novels tend to begin. I also admired the protagonist Tomas' courage in standing up to Communist goons in his native Czechoslovakia, even though it cost him his career as one of Prague's top neurosurgeons, though not his excessive womanizing. The book also makes some interesting observations on the nature of political affiliations and the appeal militant left-wing politics have for academics that live otherwise boring lives. The novel is also much better than the film version.

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