From the Publisher
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
“Compelling…That Kundera has his tongue half in his cheek is part of the charm… offers both a continuation of Kundera’s signature investigations and a reaction to the toxicity of the present day.” — Los Angeles Times
“Kundera doesn’t present himself as a priest of the novel who, having been inducted into its higher mysteries, now deigns to share his brilliance with mere mortals. He is simply one character among others in the novel, curious, perplexed, and amused by the spectacle of human nature.” — New Republic
“Kundera is a master at uniting disparate characters by tracing their intersecting journeys, and by allowing resonant words inside the head of one character to sing inside the thoughts of another.” — The Atlantic
“An entertaining divertissement, a lightly comic fiction blending Gallic theorizing and Russian-style absurdity…This is, in short, just the book for an idle afternoon spent sipping espresso and watching the passing show on the Boulevard Saint-Michel or Connecticut Avenue.” — Michael Dirda, Washington Post
“Stunningly profound…a late-career confection which, in its compact slimness, re-proves Kundera’s chops when it comes to overlapping narratives and beautifully expressing the junk and clutter of the modern world.” — NPR Books
“Slender but weighty, thoroughly cerebral…It comes as a welcome corrective to so much American-style realist fiction, which in heavy doses can blur into a kind of sameness…what is moving about this novel is its embrace of what has always driven Kundera, the delicate state of living between being and nothingness. Far from rehashing this theme, it presses it into new form: shorter, tighter, fired by aging rather than by coming of age. It would be a poor fit for Hollywood, but it’s a perfect one for Kundera, and for anyone who has looked at life in hindsight.” — Boston Globe
“This slight but wonderful novel offers its own distinct brand of pleasure… a fitting capstone on an extraordinary career.” — Benjamin Herman, Slate
“[Kundera] stands in the West as the representative Eastern European author of the second half of the 20th century-and the most celebrated Czech writer since Kafka… a wily, playful, feather-light novella…It seems fitting that he should end his career not with a bang but a giggle.” — Wall Street Journal
“This novel is a fitting bookend to Kundera’s long career intersecting the absurd and the moral.” — Publishers Weekly
“Forgotten tyrants and blatant belly buttons have equally playful roles in this deceptively slight, whimsically thoughtful tale of a few men in Paris…This strangely amusing novella has the power to inspire serious efforts to find significance in the very book in which it is so perversely denied.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Stylistically and thematically, it’s classic Kundera: polyphonic, digressive, intellectual yet anti-philosophical, deliberately strange, and aggressively light. And his descriptions are as beautiful as ever.” — Booklist
“His first novel in almost 15 years, Kundera takes us on a journey where the only thing that really matters to his four characters is the word ‘friendship’. Another beautiful work from Kundera, he casts light on serious issues while not saying anything serious at all.” — The Reading Room
“Its lightness is heavy with the weight of previous Kundera books, so a Stalin reference blooms with additional meaning — because it’s been set so strikingly against previous portrayals of communism.” — Huffington Post
“Poignant, surreal, and funny…” — The Millions
“Enjoyable…readers will be very pleased with this latest release from Kundera, which has all the wit and humour of his earlier Immortality, but adds to this a unique and careful attention to unknown characters’ lives.” — Publish ArtsHub
Boston Globe
Slender but weighty, thoroughly cerebral…It comes as a welcome corrective to so much American-style realist fiction, which in heavy doses can blur into a kind of sameness…what is moving about this novel is its embrace of what has always driven Kundera, the delicate state of living between being and nothingness. Far from rehashing this theme, it presses it into new form: shorter, tighter, fired by aging rather than by coming of age. It would be a poor fit for Hollywood, but it’s a perfect one for Kundera, and for anyone who has looked at life in hindsight.
New Republic
Kundera doesn’t present himself as a priest of the novel who, having been inducted into its higher mysteries, now deigns to share his brilliance with mere mortals. He is simply one character among others in the novel, curious, perplexed, and amused by the spectacle of human nature.
NPR Books
Stunningly profound…a late-career confection which, in its compact slimness, re-proves Kundera’s chops when it comes to overlapping narratives and beautifully expressing the junk and clutter of the modern world.
Wall Street Journal
[Kundera] stands in the West as the representative Eastern European author of the second half of the 20th century-and the most celebrated Czech writer since Kafka… a wily, playful, feather-light novella…It seems fitting that he should end his career not with a bang but a giggle.
The Atlantic
Kundera is a master at uniting disparate characters by tracing their intersecting journeys, and by allowing resonant words inside the head of one character to sing inside the thoughts of another.
Michael Dirda
An entertaining divertissement, a lightly comic fiction blending Gallic theorizing and Russian-style absurdity…This is, in short, just the book for an idle afternoon spent sipping espresso and watching the passing show on the Boulevard Saint-Michel or Connecticut Avenue.
New York Times Book Review
There is a timeless quality to his philosophy about the importance of laughter…Kundera is still the powerful and incisive writer he always was.
Benjamin Herman
This slight but wonderful novel offers its own distinct brand of pleasure… a fitting capstone on an extraordinary career.
|Los Angeles Times
Compelling…That Kundera has his tongue half in his cheek is part of the charm… offers both a continuation of Kundera’s signature investigations and a reaction to the toxicity of the present day.
Booklist
Stylistically and thematically, it’s classic Kundera: polyphonic, digressive, intellectual yet anti-philosophical, deliberately strange, and aggressively light. And his descriptions are as beautiful as ever.
Publish ArtsHub
Enjoyable…readers will be very pleased with this latest release from Kundera, which has all the wit and humour of his earlier Immortality, but adds to this a unique and careful attention to unknown characters’ lives.
The Millions
Poignant, surreal, and funny…
The Reading Room
His first novel in almost 15 years, Kundera takes us on a journey where the only thing that really matters to his four characters is the word ‘friendship’. Another beautiful work from Kundera, he casts light on serious issues while not saying anything serious at all.
Huffington Post
Its lightness is heavy with the weight of previous Kundera books, so a Stalin reference blooms with additional meaning — because it’s been set so strikingly against previous portrayals of communism.
Booklist
Stylistically and thematically, it’s classic Kundera: polyphonic, digressive, intellectual yet anti-philosophical, deliberately strange, and aggressively light. And his descriptions are as beautiful as ever.
Wall Street Journal
[Kundera] stands in the West as the representative Eastern European author of the second half of the 20th century-and the most celebrated Czech writer since Kafka… a wily, playful, feather-light novella…It seems fitting that he should end his career not with a bang but a giggle.
Los Angeles Times
Compelling…That Kundera has his tongue half in his cheek is part of the charm… offers both a continuation of Kundera’s signature investigations and a reaction to the toxicity of the present day.
OCTOBER 2015 - AudioFile
Many listeners may be familiar with the abstract, somewhat philosophical nature of Kundera’s work. While the multiple levels of meaning in this one should come as no surprise, Richmond Hoxie’s delivery is, nonetheless, pleasantly enlightening. He provides the patience and care the story requires if its lasting meaning is to be revealed as he speaks artfully, with steady enthusiasm and a clear appreciation for the words. The irony of D’Ardelo’s inability to ask out an attractive woman because he’s using a fake cancer scare as a way to judge how important he is to his friends is blissfully performed by Hoxie. Other equally ridiculous (and poignant) moments are also made memorable by his ability to emote clearly. N.J.B. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2015-04-04
Forgotten tyrants and blatant belly buttons have equally playful roles in this deceptively slight, whimsically thoughtful tale of a few men in Paris not doing or saying much. The sight of young women with exposed navels in the Luxembourg Gardens sets Alain to musing "on the different sources of feminine seductiveness." Not far away, Ramon avoids a Chagall show because of the long line. D'Ardelo, whose medical tests reveal he doesn't have cancer after all, nonetheless lies when he meets Ramon in the park and says he does. A man seduces a woman with banal remarks because brilliance challenges her to compete, "whereas insignificance sets her free." Stalin enters the narrative by way of a biography of Khrushchev given to Charles, who tells a visiting Ramon that "our master" provided it. The master is the narrator or author, whose intrusions resonate with Charles' desire to use the Khrushchev story in a marionette theater. The Stalin thread opens with a bad joke about his bagging 24 partridges on a hunt, a story derided by Khrushchev and others over the urinals they share. (Scholars may reference the latrine fouled by Stalin's son in The Unbearable Lightness of Being.) Charles, Ramon, and Alain discuss how the monstrous Stalin has faded from memory. But the narrative recalls an official named Kalinin, a "poor innocent puppet" in Stalin's government, who has a weak bladder. He and the tyrant reappear late in the book, shooting and urinating in the Luxembourg Gardens before driving off in a small carriage drawn by two ponies. Art, sex, disease, history, and friendship are lightly treated themes woven through scenes whose significance may be partly the disproving of a concern raised in Kundera's Ignorance, that "emigration causes artists to lose their creativity." But does the Czech-born writer who's lived in France for years truly believe, at age 86, that insignificance is "the essence of existence"? This strangely amusing novella has the power to inspire serious efforts to find significance in the very book in which it is so perversely denied.
