milan kundera from the joke to insignificance

“There is a timeless quality to his philosophy about the importance of laughter…Kundera is still the powerful and incisive writer he always was.” - New York Times Book Review Strange sort of laughter, inspired by our time, which is comical because it has lost all sense of humor. Kundera is finally and fully realizing his old aesthetic dream in this novel that we could easily view as a summation of his whole work. And in Slowness, Vera, the author’s wife, says to her husband: “you’ve often told me you meant to write a book one day that would have not a single serious word in it…I warn you: watch out. In Immortality, Goethe and Hemingway stroll through several chapters together talking and laughing. Readers who know Milan Kundera’s earlier books know that the wish to incorporate an element of the “unserious” in a novel is not at all unexpected of him. What is moving about this novel is its embrace of what has always driven Kundera, the delicate state of living between being and nothingness.”- Boston Globeįrom the internationally acclaimed, bestselling author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, an entertaining and enchanting novel-'a fitting capstone on an extraordinary career.' ( Slate)Ĭasting light on the most serious of problems and at the same time saying not one serious sentence being fascinated by the reality of the contemporary world and at the same time completely avoiding realism-that’s The Festival of Insignificance.

Now, far from watching out, Kundera is finally and fully realizing his old aesthetic dream in this novel that we could easily view as a summation of his whole work. And in Slowness, Vera, the author's wife, says to her husband: 'you've often told me you meant to write a book one day that would have not a single serious word in itI warn you: watch out.

Readers who know Milan Kundera's earlier books know that the wish to incorporate an element of the 'unserious' in a novel is not at all unexpected of him. Casting light on the most serious of problems and at the same time saying not one serious sentence being fascinated by the reality of the contemporary world and at the same time completely avoiding realism - that's The Festival of Insignificance.

Milan kundera from the joke to insignificance