The bestselling modern classic for fans of Dostoyevsky's White Nights and Sabahattin Ali's Madonna in a Fur Coat: the iconic novel of love, angst and politics in communist Czechoslovakia.A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon: a man torn between his love for her and his womanising. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals, while her other lover stands to lose everything because of his noble qualitie...

The last novel by the international superstar and author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.'Kundera is the saddest, funniest, and most lovable of authors.' TimesAn artist, clearly one of the best to be found anywhere.' Salman Rushdie'Kundera designs fictions of the highest order.' Ian McEwanCasting light on the most serious of problems and at the same time saying not one ...

One of the century's most famous novels, available for the first time on audio - read by Richmond Hoxie. Milan Kundera's iconic novel of love and politics in communist Czechoslovakia is 'a dark and brilliant achievement' (Ian McEwan).'A cult figure.' Guardian'Shamelessly clever ... Exhilaratingly subversive and funny.' Independent'A modern classic ... As relevant now as wh...

A heady, existential tale of seduction and romance by the author of modern classic The Unbearable Lightness of Being.'An artist, clearly one of the best to be found anywhere.' Salman Rushdie'Kundera designs fictions of the highest order.' Ian McEwan'Audacity, wit and sheer brilliance.' New York Times Book ReviewIn a French château on a midsummer's night, two tales of seducti...

The bestselling masterpiece tale of love and exile in Prague by the author of modern classic The Unbearable Lightness of Being.'An artist, clearly one of the best to be found anywhere.' Salman Rushdie'A subtle, penetrating and deeply felt exploration of the sadness, loneliness and irreparable loss of exile: one of [Kundera's] best novels.' Sunday TimesIrena has been exiled to Paris since leaving C...

All too often, this brilliant novel of thwarted love and revenge miscarried has been read for its political implications. Now, a quarter century after The Joke was first published and several years after the collapse of the Soviet-imposed Czechoslovak regime, it becomes easier to put such implications into perspective in favor of valuing the book (and all Kundera 's work) as what it truly is: great, stirring literature that sheds new light on the eternal themes of human existence.Th...

Kundera brilliantly examines the work of such important and diverse figures as Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne, Diderot, Flaubert, Tolstoy, and Musil. He is especially penetrating on Hermann Broch, and his exploration of the world of Kafka's novels vividly reveals the comic terror of Kafka's bureaucratized universe. Kundera's discussion of his own work includes his views on the role of historical events in fiction, the meaning of action, and the creation of character in the post-psychological ...

Milan Kundera is a master of graceful illusion and illuminating surprise. In one of these stories a young man and his girlfriend pretend that she is a stranger he picked up on the road - only to become strangers to each other in reality as their game proceeds. In another a teacher fakes piety in order to seduce a devout girl, then jilts her and yearns for God. In yet another girls wait in bars, on beaches, and on station platforms for the same lover, a middle-aged Don Juan who has gone hom...

A philosophical masterpiece by the author of modern classic The Unbearable Lightness of Being.'An artist, clearly one of the best to be found anywhere.' Salman Rushdie'Kundera designs fictions of the highest order.' Ian McEwanChantal awaits her partner in a hotel on the Normandy coast, struggling to find him on a crowded beach. After mistaking him for a stranger, they reunite, and she reveals her fears of me...

A passionate and provocative defence of art from the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.Are we living in an era that no longer values art or beauty? This is Kundera's passionate defence of the creators who remain viscerally important to him, and whose work - especially the blazing newness of modernism - helps us better understand our world. From Francis Bacon's paintings to the films of Federico Fellini, novels by Philip Roth or Fyodor Dostoyevsky...

In this dark farce of a novel, set in an old-fashioned Central European spa town, eight characters are swept up in an accelerating dance. Perhaps the most brilliantly plotted and entertaining of Milan Kundera's novels, Farewell Waltz poses the most serious questions with a blasphemous lightness that makes us see that the modern world has deprived us even of the right to tragedy.Written in Bohemia in 1969-70, this book was first published in 1976. This beautiful new translation, made...

'[A] curious and fascinating book . . . The vivacity of Kundera's prose, the whirl of his ideas, and his sincere engagement with grand narratives and troubling questions remind you what a rare talent he is.' IndependentCasting 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. Readers who...