Milan Kundera Books

Milan Kundera gives us a new insite on what makes a novel a different type of literature. He is widely read, witty and light. At the same time his opinions are thought provoking and the breadth and appropriateness of his quotations a joy to read. I must say that I read the book in one rainy weekend sitting and that it has been a long time since I have enjoyed so much following an author's thought process.

The Curtain is Kundera's third work of literary criticism/theory and it is, in my view, the best. It is more focused than Art of the Novel and less bitter than Testaments Betrayed. Here Kundera presents extremely readable and pointed analyses of several works and, more importantly, provides a larger argument about the role of the novel in the world and its moral capabilities. He provides insights into several well known writers such as Cervantes and Kafka, but he has also alerted me to many writers with whom I was previously unfamiliar. It is one of those books that, after you finish, will make you want to go and read a dozen other books. And I think that is a good thing.

In The Curtain, which in fact is a series of separate pieces, each of which are further divided into component pieces, Kundera presents the novel and novelists in a tableau of history, politics, and culture. His manner is discursive. Among his shaggy dog elements: the novel as psychological exploration of character or as existential analysis; phenomenological observations on the workings of memory; Rabelais, Cervantes, and Hermann Broch (The Sleepwalkers) as stand-alone contributors to the nonlinear history of the novel, along with Sterne, Flaubert, Kafka, Carlos Fuentes, and more; the influence of national culture on art (the difference between French "vulgarity" and Central European "kitsch"); the innards of a novel's process, and the workings of prosai-comi-epic imagination ...

It occurred to me, as I began to scribble notes on this or that observation, put so succinctly and well, that I hadn't felt the need to do that in a while, since reading E.M. Cioran's observations on life, in fact, and before that the aesthetic takes on visual art of Andre Malraux in Anti-Memoirs) and the comments on writing by Sartre in Why I Write. You can reread such books, as I expect I'll reread this one as well.I Think, Therefore Who Am I?

It is unfortunate many readers of serious fiction will never read this book. Milan Kundera (1929) is a Czech-born writer who writes mostly in French these days. He is best known for his novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel (Perennial Classics) (1984), a profound exploration of the fragile nature of the life of an individual. Following The Art of the Novel (1985) and Testaments Betrayed (1992), his seven-part essay, The Curtain, is part three in a trilogy of essays on the European novel. Translated by Linda Asher, it was originally published as "Le Rideau," in French in April 2005 by Gallimard. It should be considered required reading for anyone interested in knowing what the novel is all about.

Kundera believes that reading novels, from Cervantes, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy, to Kafka, Garcia Marquez, and Rushdie, offers a way of thinking that is essential to understanding human nature and our own lives. Reading allows us to tear down "the curtain" of pre-interpreted assumptions ingrained in our psyche, enabling us to have an unobstructed vision of the world we inhabit: "A magic curtain, woven of legends, hung before the world. Cervantes sent Don Quixote journeying and tore through the curtain. The world opened before the knight errant in all the comical nakedness of its prose" (p.92). For Kundera, "a novel that fails to reveal some unknown bit of existence is immoral" (p.61); its objective should be to reach into "the soul of things'" and the '"enigmas of existence." Understanding human life--that is "the raison d'etre of the art of the novel" (p.10). Anything less than that is mere "babble."

Although Kundera's subject is erudite, his writing is easy to follow--like sitting in a Paris cafe with a 78-year-old scholar, discussing why reading serious European literature matters.

G. Merritt

Kundera's book about the novel is not exactly as billed. These are not seven
essays. What we have is a set of notes, some speculations and assertions about
the past and future of the novel and its place in the world of literature and art.

Since these happen to be the spectulations of one of the most radically unsentimental
writers of our time, they are very valuable indeed. As the thoughts of a writer
whose work inspires other novelists (well, okay, this novelist) to keep writing,
they're especially precious.

Kundera urges us to see the novel in the context of its history. He suggests that its
reason for being is that the novel can tell a particular kind of truth, that it can
get to the heart of things and tear back the curtain of interpretation that veils
our realities.

The specifics of this arguement are as enlightening as the arguement itself:Cervantes'
humor as a reprise of what grownups know about the world, Rabelais' coinage of
a word for the humorless, Musil's irony, Stifter's prescience. Read Kundera to enlarge
your circle of acquaintance and turn literary acquaintances into teachers.

For all the inspiration that Kundera's work affords writers, this is a very pessimistic
book. With the death of historical awareness and appreciation for the moment comes
the death of the novel. Without 'the history of various arts, there's not much left
to works of art'. It's the pessimism of the true conservative-one whose heritage and
nation have vanished and being now incapable of growth can only be shored up
against the inevitable ravages of the new.

This perspective encourages-I think-an appreciation for the everyday, a Gestalt
shrink's awareness of the here and now. It's the kind of appreciation that rubs off on
the reader. If the reader is also a writer, this is the stuff that keeps you going.


--Lynn Hoffman, author of New Short Course in Wine,The and
the extremely charismatic bang BANG: A Novel ISBN 9781601640005

Arguably one of the greatest contemporary writers around, Milan Kundera is one of the most difficult writers to read and analyze. I say this because he can be read on many levels. To get a much richer and fuller read, there is no escaping the work of Maria Nemcova Banerjee. In "Terminal Paradox: The Novels of Milan Kundera" Banerjee cuts through the complex intertextual basis for Kundera's work. Kundera is heavily influenced by the likes of Cervantes, Nietzsche, Kafka, Rabelais, and Tolstoy - to name a few. To be able to "really" understand Kundera with some depth and understanding you need to have an understanding of his masters - Banerjee does this for us - she creates a roadmap. I am not saying that you can stop now and consider her work a substitute for gaining access to this deeper understanding of Kundera's work - but it sure makes it much easier. If you wish to undertake a serious academic consideration of Kundera's work - "Terminal Paradox - The Novels of Milan Kundera" is an invaluable resource and I recommend it highly.

Miguel Llora

Arguably one of the greatest contemporary writers around, Milan Kundera is one of the most difficult writers to read and analyze. I say this because he can be read on many levels. To get a much richer and fuller read, there is no escaping the work of Maria Nemcova Banerjee. In "Terminal Paradox: The Novels of Milan Kundera" Banerjee cuts through the complex intertextual basis for Kundera's work. Kundera is heavily influenced by the likes of Cervantes, Nietzsche, Kafka, Rabelais, and Tolstoy - to name a few. To be able to "really" understand Kundera with some depth and understanding you need to have an understanding of his masters - Banerjee does this for us - she creates a roadmap. I am not saying that you can stop now and consider her work a substitute for gaining access to this deeper understanding of Kundera's work - but it sure makes it much easier. If you wish to undertake a serious academic consideration of Kundera's work - "Terminal Paradox - The Novels of Milan Kundera" is an invaluable resource and I recommend it highly.

Miguel Llora

Arguably one of the greatest contemporary writers around, Milan Kundera is one of the most difficult writers to read and analyze. I say this because he can be read on many levels. To get a much richer and fuller read, there is no escaping the work of Maria Nemcova Banerjee. In "Terminal Paradox: The Novels of Milan Kundera" Banerjee cuts through the complex intertextual basis for Kundera's work. Kundera is heavily influenced by the likes of Cervantes, Nietzsche, Kafka, Rabelais, and Tolstoy - to name a few. To be able to "really" understand Kundera with some depth and understanding you need to have an understanding of his masters - Banerjee does this for us - she creates a roadmap. I am not saying that you can stop now and consider her work a substitute for gaining access to this deeper understanding of Kundera's work - but it sure makes it much easier. If you wish to undertake a serious academic consideration of Kundera's work - "Terminal Paradox - The Novels of Milan Kundera" is an invaluable resource and I recommend it highly.

Miguel Llora

This is simply one of the best stories I have ever read. The writing is just great. You get to know the characters at a very personal level. They live, they die, they suffer. All in front of you. However, you never feel overwhelmed by so many details. The plot gets you to an unexpected ending that leaves you thinking for quite some time after you have reached it. Thinking about love and hate.

Por un amor de juventud escribes una postal que gente del partido intercepta, eres juzgado y rechazado una broma sobre política fue tomada en serio. Es sólo la absurda anécdota de la vida que sirve de guía al libro, hay otras muchas, y sobre todo, esa reflexión, esa agudeza en cada uno de los actos de la vida, esas cosas que creemos nadie ha pensado. Eso es lo que kundera siempre cuenta.

Immortality - Milan Kunder

I read this first as an excerpt in the New Yorker before it was published in the states and I didn't read it so much as devour it. The first few chapters are dazzling, but they set a pace that is difficult for the rest of the book to keep up with. There are some places where I felt like I was trying to sprint waist-high in mud - don't get me wrong, I love Goethe, but these passages relating to him did not compel me with the magic of the first sections or the last. I have read the book three times since then and find more to love about it, argue with and be intrigued with each time. Erudite and compelling, a man who knows womens' minds perhaps too well, I love this writer.

C'est grâce à un cours de philo que j'ai découvert cet ouvrage. Au début par obligation et ensuite par plaisir, j'ai passé à travers de ce livre en un rien de temps

Si vous n'avez qu'un seul ouvrage de Kundera à lire dans votre vie, ça doit absolument être l'insoutenable légèreté de l'être. Kundera à une telle manière de rendre ce qui, à priori, pourrait être une banale histoire d'amour d'une façon particulièrement cynique et bizarre. Bref, j'ai adoré!

A real treat to read! This book contains reviews/critiques of all of Kundera's major works begining with his first novel, The Joke, up to 1996's Slowness with heavy emphasis placed on analysis of The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. The highlight of this collection are the four interviews with Kundera. He is a fantastic interviewee and we, of course, gain further insight into the workings of his mind. To maximize enjoyment of this collection I recommend that the reader be familiar with all of Kundera's output.

Although Identity is not the best book Milan Kundera has wrote (both The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Immortality are stronger, more thoroughly thought through books) any Kundera fan is sure to appreciate this signed edition. The cover and binding are beautiful, and the strange dream like narrative inside provides enough of the psychological insights Kundera is famous for to keep the reader interested.

Fred Misurella takes Milan Kundera and makes him accessible.

Not that Milan Kundera is incomprehensible, it is just that there are so many twists and turns sometimes a little help is all we need. Misurella is good at noting the parabatic asides and is excellent at zeroing in on some of the key themes that Kundera explores. His read on "The Joke" is so comprehensive, it is almost a must to have this book with you like dictionary.

His reading of "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" is really interesting. Taking the approach form a Oedipus angle, Misurella misses some of the subtle Nietzsche and Tolstoy angles that Kundera includes. "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" is full of references to "The Eternal Return" and "Anna Karenina" that it is impossible to miss - and Misurella misses this by placing the Oedipus read at the center.

If you read "Understanding Milan Kundera" along side Maria Nemcova Banerjee's "Terminal Paradoxes" and John O'Brian's "Milan Kundera & feminism : dangerous intersections" then you will get a greater appreciation for the complexity of Kundera's work.

If you use the book as a reader, then you will have taken advantage of the book already. However, Misurella does an ending with "The Art of the Novel" that brings Kundera's work together very nicely. It is impossible to even try to do a comprehensive piece of Kundera as the body of work is so huge and complex. Misurella does a wonderful job of taking such a complex subject and making is accessible for folks like me. I recommend it highly along with the other books above. I'm sure Kundera would agree.

Miguel Llora

Milan Kundera's book, The Unearable Lightness of Being was a great, light but heartfelt read. I am sure can all relate to Sabine's sittuation with Tomas and the feeling of being/ seeming wonderfull but never being 'the one'. Kundera's reading reminds me of Salinger and Kesey's works but is not as good.

Milan Kundera has epitomized what lonliness and life is like in and out of love/lust. I enjoyed the author's insight into each character. He takes time to expose their flaws and explain only what is necessary. I enjoy this book every time I read it.

This book may not be for everyone but I simply loved it. A love story with a philosophical bent it leaves you questioning your own life and decisions. Burdened by love or light enough to achieve beauty or somewhere in between?

This quote from the beginning of the book says it all:

"The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.

Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.

What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?"

How to explain a book into which one sinks? It deftly captures all the nuances, both positive and negative, of falling in love, out of love and back again. Yet it is not a love story, not in the sense that one would imagine. It is so much more; it is written with such a light hand that the prose becomes poetic and sings itself off the page.

"If a love is to be unforgettable, fortunities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi's shoulders."

"While people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and exchange motifs (the way Tomas and Sabina exchanged the motif of the bowler hat), but if they meet when they are older, like Fraz and Sabina, their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them."

The best I could do to provide evidence of this book's beauty was to point to the words themselves. Yet, without the backing of all the other words they seem so much dryer than they do on the page. Some of the luster is lost when devoid of their context.

In short, read it. Read it once and it will become a book you'll read over and over again forever.

This book is overly pretentious; so do not be fooled by the superfluous 5 star reviews that so many literary idealists have given it.

First, let me tell you what is good about the book. Kundera offers his readers some beautiful metaphors--in fact, some of the best I have ever read, but unfortunately the book's significance practically ends there.

Although Kundera's book starts off on a promising note, posing strong existential questions, his postulates fail to deliver any thought provoking "weightiness."

Ironically, it is Kundera's incessant attempt to produce "weightier" concepts as the book progresses that inevitably ruin it.

Kundera opens his novel with originality, discussing Nietzsche and eternal returns; but as his novel progresses he drifts far from originality, and as if he is struggling to appeal to mass market, or all those wannabe intellects sitting around smoke filled coffee houses drinking lattes and discussing what it is to feel "the unbearable lightness of being," he closes his novel with one of his last, "profound" philosophical discussions--analyzing God's potential bowl moments.

Wow, I feel enlightened already.

In addition, Kundera's attempt to present his philosophical treatise through his superficial story of Tomas, Sabina, etc. was meager.

Sometimes Kundera's storyline effectively embodied his philosophical exposition, and many times I was filled with hope and promise that the story would remain on that path, but on the contrary, I mostly found his characters completely contradictory to everything Kundera was using them to represent. Ultimately, I found the actions, complacency, and attitudes of Tomas, Tereza, etc. rather incredulous.

Everyone's childhood was plagued with malevolence, even Karenin's "puppyhood" was fatefully doomed. His bland storyline made poor attempts to discuss those human dualities, such as love and lovemaking, life and rebirth, all those dichotomies which produce lightness and weightiness.

I found myself replacing words with blah, blah, blah, blah, blah while I was reading; and most of the time, I found myself so disappointed that I felt worse than when Tomas suffered from those dreadful stomach aches.

This book was "unbearable" for me to read. However, what I find most fascinating is that when I finally finished the book, I was so elated that I experienced that strange, melancholy feeling, that "unbearable lightness of being."

Maybe that was Kundera's intention. Maybe he meant to write this book to incite exactly that emotion in his readers.

I guess I'll spend my time pondering over that philosophical question...then again, maybe I won't.

I love the story but have never been able to finish the book. I listened to this on a road trip to California and found it very enjoyable. They did cut a major section, but I guess that is what you contend with in an abridged version.

Don Quixote well deserves its place in the pantheon of world classics. For me, it's the ultimate desert island book. It is simply an indescribable jewel, full of fun, hilarity, adventure, beauty, wisdom, social commentary, tragedy, and entertainment. And I believe that J.M. Cohen's translation is the best there is. He obviously had a love for the material and left us a beautifully rendered work. The encomium in his Times obituary was on the mark when it said that he was "the translator of foreign prose classics for our times."

But this audio version of Don Quixote wasn't enjoyable.

The Basics: This is a three hour abridgment of Don Quixote read by actor and stage performer Michael York. Don Quixote is the Spanish classic written by Miguel de Cervantes. It's the story if a disenchanted nobleman who takes on the persona of a Knight in a quest to find love and glory. The real work is much deeper than the popularized versions of this story, which is unfortunate. This is read well byt he talented Miachael York, but isn't nearly as entertaining as it could have been. It just seems to fall flat. Running time 3 hours.

The translation is perfect except, as the translator has noted, on the poems found through out the book. The book itself is just plain beautiful, the author, Cervantes, is a master of prose and creativity, not to mention he has a great sense of humor. In my opinion, he is not too far off from Shakespeare. A+

Don Quixote by Cervantes is often called the first modern novel and many rate it as one of the best novels ever written in any language. That itself stirs enough interest and curiosity for a reader like me, and trust me, reading the novel is a highly rewarding and entertaining experience. The plot and sub-plots are primarily guided by Don Quixote's obsession with knight-errantly, forming acts to chivalry and participating in adventures in a manner he read in such books. Sancho serves as his squire and complements and supplements his master in every possible way. Quixote is kind at heart, his every act is inspired by a good intention, a dreamer trapped in a body that prompts him to be called the "knight of rueful countenance", a loyal lover whose never set eye on her who he so praises and desires in a chaste way! Yet he is so full of imaginary tales and characters that he lives in a make-believe world, where he mistakes windmills for monsters, herds of sheep for armies, and so on, attacks them, defends them, and Cerventes manages to weave a saga of such events in a form that identifies with allegory, fable, epic and comic drama at the same time.

Panza, on the other hand, is a fatso, ever hungry for food, wine and money, full of practical sensibility as well as easily misguided simplicity, and is as entertaining a case study as his master. To complete the cast, are two unlikely prime characters: Rocinante, who is a horse as old and shrivelled as his master and Dapple, Sancho's donkey who Sancho considers more dear to himself than anything in the world.

The novel starts at a slow pace, and with the mention of alll sorts of established names of knight-errantry that must have been vogue in those times, Cerventes builds the stage for the rise of our hero. Since I have never read any of the described references, the first fifty or so pages seemed quite obstruse to me. Like for every classic, I knew I had to read on atleast 200 pages for characters to establish themselves. Thereafter, the various escapades and misadventures described in the two books follow like eagerly waited episodes. Again this is a novel that must be read piecemeal.

Besides the humor, knight-errantry, a quixotic master and a pragmatic but simple squire, Cervantes masterfully creates a plethora of characters and situations where he writes about love, war, God, Moors, government, wife, and every conceivable thing related to man as a social being. In some ways, the book is an elegant discourse on how things are and how they could be. Even the humor laden with satire is a subtle taunt at the way good people eat humble pie when their dreamt adventures are deemed ordinary by plotting evil enchanters.

The book is full of proverbs that Sancho throws into his every sentence, so many of these are hilarious and yet all carry the wisdom of that age saved in one epic saga. Similarly, there must have been a considerable play of words, as Sancho misuses and mispronounces many words, and the translator Smollett tries hard to capture some of these.

Don Quixote, in effect, has the appeal and humor to last the humankind forever, and we bow to thee O Cerventes! for creating such a cornucopia of wisdom and instruction for us humble readers .