The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts

by Milan Kundera (Author), Linda Asher (Translator), Milan Kundera (Author), Linda Asher (Translator)

• New

  Paperback
  2008

  $18.57

• New

  Paperback
  2007

  $14.55

  In this entertaining and always stimulating collection of seven essays, Kundera deftly sketches out his personal view of the history and value of the novel. Too often, he suggests, a novel is thought about only within the confines of the nation of its origin, when in fact the novel's development has always occurred across borders: Laurence Sterne learned from Rabelais, Henry Fielding from Cervantes, Joyce from Flaubert, Garcia Marquez from Kafka. The real work of a novel is not bound up in the specifics of any one language: what makes a novel matter is its ability to reveal some previously unknown aspect of our existence. In The Curtain , Kundera skilfully describes how the best novels do just that.