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This is a great book and I wish I had discovered it years ago, when it was translated from Czech in 1991. I liked it much more than the author's more famous book, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

A blurb says the book thoroughly explores “the great themes of existence�� which is quite a task to pull off in 345 pages, but Kundera makes quite a dent in those themes.

Where to start? There is a story: a couple has a daughter; the wife dies, and eventually the man marries his dead wife’s sister. That’s pretty much the plot. But as this story is told, the author compares the traits of the main characters and their attitudes toward life. For example, his first wife is serious, organized and not much fun. The younger sister is reckless, impulsive, at time suicidal, and has a series of affairs with men. The man is hard-working, reflective, and bit baffled by life.

Kundera speculates on philosophical themes around this simple story. He writes about gestures as memes. He explores solitude; bodies and faces; sex, love and lust; chance and coincidence; cameras and privacy. He gets into journalism and public opinion pools, Watergate, and what he calls imagology (kind of like symbolism).

The author compares a superhighway that by-passes and flies over space with a road that allows you to experience the landscape. He invents a character, Professor Avenarius, who is so upset by the dominance of the automobile in cities that he randomly slashes tires as he jogs.

And, of course, given the title of the book and Kundera’s prominence as an author, he speculates on legacies and how you can’t control how history will view you.

At times the book has the flavor of a meta-novel. In some chapters the author talks directly to the reader and tells us about the process of writing and even refers to characters in his earlier works.

In other chapters he holds imaginary conversations with folks like Goethe and Hemingway and spends a bit of time on the odd life-long relationship between Goethe and a young woman, Bettina, who was one of the world’s first self-publicists way back in the early 1800s.

Kundera points out that until recently people knew everything through their own experience: how bread is baked, how a house is built, where meat comes from, etc. He writes about categorizing people by how much time they spend thinking of the past, present or future.

In summary, the great themes of existence, reflected upon by a great thinker.

The book has a very high rating on GR for this type of philosophy book and I am also surprised as I look at my friends' reviews how many have given it a '5.' Do, definitely a good read.



Photo of the author (1929 -) from dw.com
[Revised 9/6/22 and 5/30/23]