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Customer Reviews (2)

L'insoutenable vie
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

Kundera à son meilleur
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! ... Read more

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A partir del gesto encantador de una mujer de cierta edad, el escritor crea el personaje de Agnes, alrededor de la cual apareceran su hermana Laura, su marido Paul, y todo nuestro mundo contemporaneo en el que se rinde culto a la tecnologia y la imagen. Pero ¿y si el hombre no fuera sino su imagen?, pregunta otro personaje, Rubens, quien comprueba finalmente que de la mas excitante de sus amantes solo le quedan dos o tres fotografias mentales. Esta novela transforma todos los aspectos del mundo moderno en cuestiones metafisicas. Su forma es polifonica: las aventuras de los personajes imaginarios se mezclan con la historia de dos candidatos a la inmortalidad, Goethe y Bettina von Armin; la reflexion sobre el nacimiento del homo senti-mentalis en la historia de Europa alterna con las peripecias parisienses del singular profesor Avenarius, para quien el mundo de hoy no sirve sino como objeto de juego. Kundera tiene el don de decir del modo mas cristalino lo que a uno le resulta mas dificil decirse, y en esta novela alcanza la cima de esta facultad./Milan Kundera's sixth novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman to her swimming instructor, a gesture that creates a character in the mind of a writer named Kundera. Like Flaubert's Emma or Tolstoy's Anna, Kundera's Agnes becomes an object of fascination, of indefinable longing. From that character springs a novel, a gesture of the imagination that both embodies and articulates Milan Kundera's supreme mastery of the novel and its purpose; to explore thoroughly the great, themes of existence. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Very Insightful
Amazingly insightful book. Love Kundera's writings to the max. Very easy flow. Fantastically well developed characters.

Politics as French Farce
Milan Kundera is one of the writers and intellectuals closely affiliated with Alexander Dubcek's, Prague Spring, that failed attempt to create a safe haven for "socialism with a human face."Soviet tanks ended The Prague Spring before it could really begin in 1968.

Kundera, who was unrepentant, suffered exclusion from the writer's union, loss of his teaching post at the Prague Film School, denial of a passport and the banning of his plays--and that was just the beginning.

Labeled a pariah, Kundera refused to practice Issac Babel's "aesthetics of silence."He simply went right on writing, earning a worldwide reputation that eventually rewarded him with the 1973 Prix Medicis Etranger for his hilariously funny novel, Life is Elsewhere.Kundera, still better known in Europe than in the United States, is a highly accomplished, polished and sophisticated writer.

In The Farewell Party, we have a contemporary Czech novel washed in the atmosphere of a French or Viennese turn-of-the-century farce.At a health spa and fertility clinic, only a short, four-hour drive from an unnamed European capital, barren but hopeless ladies splash in the mineral waters, hoping against hope for the miracle that will infuse them with new life.Infusion does arrive, in the form of the Mad Scientist, Dr. Skreta, and the book takes on the character of mindless erotic frolic on a gaudily bedecked stage.

The characters are better described as caricatures.There is saucy Nurse Ruzena, newly pregnant, the result of "two fateful hours," there is Kamila, the betrayed wife and Klima, her philandering husband, who just might be the father of Nurse Ruzena's baby-to-be.The absurd accelerates to near-pandemonium as these character-cliches spin and twirl, dazzling us with their antics.The atmosphere alters, however, when a new character enters the scene.This is Jakub, a rehabilitated victim of a Stalinish purge, newly-returned from the dead.

Sexual antics, burlesque, and elegant, high comedy comprise the tone of The Farewell Party and the narrative, as always, weaves its way into graceful and inevitable patterns.But as anyone who has read Kundera knows, darker elements always manage to work their way into what appears, at first glance, to be nothing more than high comedy and farce.

Political overtones begin to gather like darkening shadows, first enclosing Ruzena and Jakub who engage in a seemingly ridiculous argument over a rambling bulldog and end up wanting to kill each other.

Kundera, himself, seems amused at all of this, and he takes it in stride, as if nothing untoward has happened.Things do, however, happen...

Kundera, who wrote The Farewell Party while still living in post-Dubcek Czechoslovakia, obviously decided not to submit to any possible penalties and, instead, remained faithful to himself and his art.The result is a political novel from one of this century's most gifted writers in a time and place in which political novels were most vehemently forbidden.

Great kundera
Love Kundera...although ususally very cerebral and philosophical, however, The Farewell Party reads very quickly and is very character-based. For anyone who wonders why women and men act the way they do, Kundera is agreat source.

Great kundera
Love Kundera...although ususally very cerebral and philosophical, however, The Farewell Party reads very quickly and is very character-based. For anyone who wonders why women and men act the way they do, Kundera is agreat source.

interesting book
I need help with this book. My question is what is the significance of this location spa for this story? why this takes in spa? please if some con can email me back? ... Read more

Product Description
In the course of nine sections, this book examines the major situations of our time in the light of the wisdom of the great novelists: Kafka; Stravinsky; Hemingway; Rabelais; and Janacek. Ultimately, this brings about the question of the betrayed testaments of Europe, art and the novel. ... Read more