Author: Milan Kundera

Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classic

Pub. in: May, 1999

ISBN: 0060932139

Pages: 320

Measurements: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches

Origin of product: USA

Order code: BA00442

Other information: Reprint edition

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a novel enormously heavy in ideas, intelligence, and intensity, yet it doesn't weigh itself down with verbosity or obscure philosophy; it is unusual in the way it successfully balances erudition with narrative levity. It is a very erotic novel, not in a tawdry or cheap way, but in a way that genuinely understands how important sex is in a relationship and why it is not always an act of love. Part of the novel's tone is political; the setting is Czechoslovakia in the 1960's and 1970's, and as such, Communist oppressiveness drives much of the plot.

The principal character is a Prague surgeon named Tomas, who is divorced and isolated from his ex-wife and son. He is a notorious womanizer, a man who believes that love and sexuality have nothing in common. He continues his habit even after he marries a small-town waitress, named Tereza, with whom he fell in love. One of his mistresses is an artist named Sabina, who in turn has an affair with a married Swiss professor named Franz.

The novel tells the stories of these four people: how they relate, how their lives developed, how they arrived at their attitudes about life, love, and sex. Tereza used to take prudish offense at her mother's lewdness and sought escape through literature; Sabina's strongest link to her past is her grandfather's bowler hat. Franz, as a diffident and studious youth, always longed to be an active member of society, which he accomplishes by joining the "Grand March," a metaphorical parade of ideology, an expression of some form of political or social struggle.

By 1968, democratic reforms were being gradually introduced into the Communist Czech government, prompting the Soviets, who perceived a security threat, to invade. As a result, Tomas and Tereza flee to Zurich but eventually return to Prague, only to face the devastating effects of censorship: Refusing to write a retraction for an anti-totalitarialist letter he had sent to a local newspaper, Tomas is forced to resign his hospital position and is reduced to taking a job as a window washer.

Referring to the title, the novel's main theme is that fate is so fragile and tenuous that existence becomes insubstantial. Much of our "being" - our physical, mental, social, and emotional states - depends on our and others' decisions, impulses, and caprices; Tomas ponders that his meeting Tereza depended on six chance happenings, or accidents. (It could be argued that his meeting Tereza depended, theoretically, on an infinite number of accidents. This is what is commonly called "being in the right place at the right time.") Therefore, does existence really mean anything when anything that exists, or any event that happens, could just as easily, through a different set of circumstances, not exist or not have happened?

Kundera fashions the novel with a unique style and even a special lexicon. Words like "weight," "lightness," "unbearable," and "kitsch" are repeated in various contexts like motifs, as is Beethoven and his fatalistic "Es muss sein" ("It must be"). It could take many rereadings to absorb all the ideas in this novel, but that's what makes it the highest kind of literature - a book that encourages questions, thoughts, and analysis.

Target readers: General readers

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