The Book of Laughter and Forgetting: 'A masterpiece' (Salman Rushdie)

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting: 'A masterpiece' (Salman Rushdie)

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

Synopsis

Commissioned and closely monitored by Milan Kundera himself, this new translation brings a clarity and unmatched fidelity to the author's original text. Widely held as a work of genius, "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" is the novel that first brought him to the forefront of the international literary scene. Rich in stories, characters and imaginative range, it was written while Kundera was still forbidden to publish in his home country of Czechoslovakia, which was then behind the Iron Curtain. In seven wonderfully integrated parts, different aspects of modern existence -- from the posthumous erasure of "enemies" of communism from the historical record, to the subtle agony of the fading memory of a lost love, to the bizarre sexlessnes of modern promiscuity -- are explored with boldness, subversive humor and the magical power of fiction.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 320
Edition: Main
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 20 May 1996

ISBN 10: 057117437X
ISBN 13: 9780571174379
Book Overview: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera is the most secret of the acclaimed Czech writer's novels. This new translation is the first to be fully authorized by Milan Kundera.

Media Reviews
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting calls itself a novel, although it is part fairy tale, part literary criticism, part political tract, part musicology, and part autobiography. It can call itself whatever it wants to, because the whole is genius. -- New York Times This book, as it bluntly calls itself, is brilliant and original, written with the purity and wit that invite us directly in. -- John Updike, New York Times Book Review
Author Bio
The French-Czech novelist Milan Kundera was born in the Czech Republic and has lived in France since 1975. He is the author of the internationally acclaimed and bestselling novels The Joke, Life is Elsewhere, The Farewell Waltz, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Immortality, and the short-story collection Laughable Loves -- all originally in Czech. His more recent novels , Slowness, Identity, and Ignorance, as well as his nonfiction works, The Art of the Novel, Testaments Betrayed, The Curtain, and Encounter, were originally written in French.