New Releases by Milan Kundera

Powieść w siedmiu częściach, w której nic nie jest tym, czym się zrazu wydaje, a skutki tragicznego wypadku w zaskakujący sposób mogą zmienić losy miłosnych konfiguracji. Przypadkowy gest nieznajomej staje się dla pisarza inspiracją do napisania książki, aby anonimowa kobieta zyskała miejsce w pamięci potomnych. Miłosny trójkąt Paula i Laury oraz jej siostry Agnes, w którym gorączkowe poszukiwanie miłości służy określeniu samych siebie i ocaleniu przed zapomnieniem. Historia J.W. Goethego, genialnego pisarza, którego dzieła odcisną piętno na dziejach świata, i Bettiny, młodej kobiety, która poprzez kontrolę spuścizny Goethego stara się zapewnić sobie swoistą nieśmiertelność. Kundera w dowcipny, inteligentny i nieco złośliwy sposób wykłada czytelnikom, czym w istocie jest pragnienie nieśmiertelności.

“Slender but weighty. . . . What is moving about this novel is its embrace of what has always driven Kundera, the delicate state of living between being and nothingness.”— Boston Globe From the internationally acclaimed, bestselling author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, an entertaining and enchanting novel—"a fitting capstone on an extraordinary career." (Slate) Casting 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 know Milan Kundera’s earlier books know that the wish to incorporate an element of the “unserious” in a novel is not at all unexpected of him. In Immortality, Goethe and Hemingway stroll through several chapters together talking and laughing. And in Slowness, Vera, the author’s wife, says to her husband: “you’ve often told me you meant to write a book one day that would have not a single serious word in it…I warn you: watch out. Your enemies are lying in wait.” Kundera is finally and fully realizing his old aesthetic dream in this novel that we could easily view as a summation of his whole work. A strange sort of summation. Strange sort of epilogue. Strange sort of laughter, inspired by our time, which is comical because it has lost all sense of humor. What more can we say? Nothing. Just read.

“Kundera once more delivers a seductive, intelligent entertainment … [with] elegance and grace.” — Washington Post Book World “Nothing short of masterful.” — Newsweek A brilliant novel set in contemporary Prague, by one of the most distinguished writers of our time. A man and a woman meet by chance while returning to their homeland, which they had abandoned 20 years earlier when they chose to become exiles. Will they manage to pick up the thread of their strange love story, interrupted almost as soon as it began and then lost in the tides of history? The truth is that after such a long absence “their memories no longer match.” We always believe that our memories coincide with those of the person we loved, that we experienced the same thing. But this is just an illusion. Only those who return after 20 years, like Ulysses returning to his native Ithaca, can be dazzled and astounded by observing the goddess of ignorance first-hand. Kundera is the only author today who can take dizzying concepts such as absence, memory, forgetting, and ignorance, and transform them into material for a novel, masterfully orchestrating them into a polyphonic and moving work.

Farewell Waltz is a dark farce that takes on sex, murder, and motherhood with a lightheartedness at once chilling and profound. It is one of Kundera''s most accessible novels. Celebrated and distinguished, with an international following, Kundera commands a legion of readers who will be eager to discover, and rediscover, this gem of a novel.aSet in an old-fashioned Central European spa town, eight chracters are swept up as in an accelerating dance: a pretty nurse and her repairman boyfriend; and oddball gynecologist; a rich American (at once saint and Don Juan); a popular trumpeter and his beautiful, obsessively jealous wife; and unillusioned former political prisoner about to leave his country and his young woman ward.aThis beautiful new translation, made-like the now standard 1996 translation of Milan Kundera''sThe Book of Laughter and Forgetting-from the French text prepared by the novelist himself, fully reflects his own tone and intentions. As such, it offers an opportunity both for the discover and the rediscovery of one of the very best of a great writer''s works.

- En un balneario algo trasnochado convergen temporalmente ocho personas cuyas circustancias se van entretejiendo paulatinamente hasta formar, con la precisión de una telaraña, una trama en la que todos, directa o indirectamente, acaban viéndose atrapados : el músico célebre y la hermosa enfermera que quiere quedarse embarazada ; la celosísima esposa del músico y el joven mecánico enamorado de la enfermera ; el ex convicto, víctima de las purgas de su país, que va a despedirse de la muy cerebral Olga ; el ginecólogo, con sus fanfarrones proyectos demográficos ; el rico excéntrico, una versión de santo moderno. La despedida tiene la ligereza y la magia de un vals, de «un sueño de una noche de verano». Pero, tras esta forma intencionadamente frívola, se oculta la pregunta más grave : ¿merece el hombre vivir en esta tierra ? ¿Acaso no hay que «liberar el planeta de la garras del hombre» ? En este sentido, cuesta imaginar algo más glacial y más profundo que la aparente ligereza de Kundera.

- Milan Kundera se sirve a la vez de una novela francesa del siglo XVIII y de una excursión que a él y a su mujer se les antoja hacer a un castillo de Francia convertido en hotel, para ir dando vida a una serie de personajes del pasado y del presente que terminan coincidiendo en un congreso de entomólogos que se celebra en sus salones. Personajes e historias de ayer y de hoy van entrelazándose de tal manera que a nadie sorprendera, por ejemplo, que un hombre enfundado en un casco de motociclista, azorado e impaciente, se aleje en su moto a toda velocidad, mientras otro, con una peluca blanca, adormilado y ensimismado, se sube a una calesa que parece salida de una estampa del pasado : el primero desea sin duda dejar algo tras de sí a toda prisa ; el segundo, en cambio, parece disponerse a rememorar, al paso lento del caballo, la noche que acaba de pasar con la intrigante y seductora Madame de T.

"An absolutely dazzling entertainment. . . . Arousing on every level—political, erotic, intellectual, and above all, humorous." —Newsweek "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 Rich in its stories, characters, and imaginative range, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is the landmark literary philosophical novel that brought Milan Kundera his first big international success in the late 1970s. Like all his work, it is valuable for far more than its historical implications. In seven wonderfully integrated parts, different aspects of human existence are magnified and reduced, reordered and emphasized, newly examined, analyzed, and experienced.

Nesta que é sua primeira narrativa escrita em francês, Milan Kundera, autor de A insustentável leveza do ser, volta a investigar os limites do romance, mesclando ficção e especulação metafísica, a exemplo de mestres da Ilustração como Voltaire e Diderot. Integrando diversos personagens em planos múltiplos - o próprio autor e sua mulher, um entomólogo tcheco, os personagens de uma novela libertina do século XVIII, o "dançarino" -, Kundera propõe, em A lentidão, uma discussão a um tempo profunda e prazerosa sobre a dificuldade de apreensão do real ante a velocidade da vida moderna, a memória e o esquecimento, o clima frenético de hoje e uma época em se podia retardar o movimento em favor da fruição.

Em A valsa dos adeuses, um dos mais celebrados romances do tcheco Milan Kundera, autor de A insustentável leveza do ser, um famoso trompetista se envolve com uma enfermeira num balneário cujas águas supostamente curam a infertilidade. É só o início de uma série de relações imprevisíveis e perigosas. Em um pequeno balneário decadente, oito personagens se ligam de maneiras improváveis. Esterilidade, amor não correspondido, adultério, depressão, aborto: Kundera reúne neste romance todos os elementos que podem perturbar o amor. Pares se encontram e desencontram como se rodopiassem ao som de uma valsa. A música dá partida para o tema inicial do livro: a gravidez indesejada de uma jovem em contrapartida ao desejo de ser mãe que leva as mulheres até a estação de águas. Aos poucos, Milan Kundera nos apresenta a outros pares, a outros temas. E, através desses personagens, o autor levanta questões mais do que nunca atuais, como a ética dos processos de fertilização, a traição entre amigos, os limites da paixão, as armadilhas do ciúme, o despertar do erotismo, a necessidade de tomar as rédeas da própria vida ou morte. Aos poucos Kundera vai desmontando essa ciranda para montar um desfecho surpreendente e ousado.

Una brillante disección del amor en nuestros días que se ha convertido en uno de los grandes hitos de la literatura contemporánea. Ésta es una historia de amor, o sea de celos, de sexo, de traiciones y también de las debilidades y paradojas de la vida cotidiana de dos parejas cuyos destinos se entrelazan. Los celos de Teresa por Tomás, el terco amor de éste por ella, opuesto a su irrefrenable deseo de otras mujeres, el idealismo de Franz, amante de Sabina, y la necesidad de ésta, amante también de Tomás, de perseguir una libertad que tan sólo la conduce a la insoportable levedad del ser, se convierten de simple anécdota en reflexión sobre problemas que nos afectan a todos.

- Tal vez por haber sido escritas en el periodo (entre 1959, y 1968) más feliz de la vida de Milan Kundera, según sus propias palabras, estas narraciones son las más alegres, las más seriamente desvergonzadas y las más reflexivamente divertidas de su obra. La farándula de personajes hedonistas que desfila aquí ante nosotros en busca de los juegos múltiples y contradictorios de la amistad, el amor y el sexo no puede sino incitar a la risa, atrapados como están en el mundo loco de severidad, hermetismo e inquisición que les rodea. Una risa auténtica, traviesa ; un humor sabio, sagaz y gozador, al que ya nos tiene acostumbrados el autor de La insoportable levedad del ser.

Una novela ya clásica en torno al olvido, el erotismo y el humor. Mientras Tamina, una joven viuda en el exilio, quiere recuperar sus diarios íntimos para reconstruir con ellos sus cada vez más vagos recuerdos de su vida matrimonial, Mirek, en Bohemia, trata, en cambio, de recobrar unas antiguas cartas de amor para borrar parte de su pasado. Como dice el propio autor, «es una novela sobre Tamina y, en el momento en el que Tamina desaparece de la escena, es una novela para Tamina. Ella es el personaje principal y el principal espectador y todas las demás historias son variaciones de su historia y se reúnen en su vida como en un espejo».

Un uomo e una donna si incontrano per caso mentre tornano al loro paese natale, che hanno abbandonato vent’anni prima scegliendo la via dell’esilio. Riusciranno a riannodare i fili di una strana storia d’amore, appena iniziata e subito inghiottita dalla storia? Il fatto è che dopo una così lunga assenza «i loro ricordi non si somigliano». La nostra memoria è flebile: viviamo sprofondati in un immenso oblio, e ci rifiutiamo di saperlo. Solo coloro che, come Ulisse, tornano dopo vent’anni a Itaca possono contemplare, attoniti e abbagliati, la dea dell’ignoranza.

El doctor Havel, la enfermera Alzbeta, Eduard, Alice, Kiara y una falsa autoestopista son algunos de los inolvidables personajes que se entregan a los múltiples y contradictorios juegos propiciados por la amistad, el amor y el sexo. En un entorno inquisitivo y sofocante, ellos protagonizan siete aventuras, siete encuentros y desencuentros con los que Kundera, con la brillantez que lo caracteriza, incita a una risa traviesa, a un humor sabio, refinado y gozoso.

Proyectar una luz sobre los problemas y a la vez no pronunciar una sola frase seria, estar fascinado por la realidad del mundo contemporáneo y, a la vez, evitar todo realismo, así es la fiesta de la insignificancia. Quien conozca las obras anteriores de Kundera sabe que en el no son en absoluto inesperadas las ganas de incorporar en una novela algo. En la inmortalidad, Goethe y Hemingway pasean juntos durante muchos capítulos, charlan y se divierten. Y en la lentitud, vera, la esposa del autor, dice a su marido. Pero en lugar de ir, con cuidado, en esta novela Kundera ve por fin plenamente cumplido su viejo sueño estético, que puede leerse como un sorprendente resumen de toda su obra. Menudo resumen. Menudo epilogo. Menuda risa inspirada en nuestra época, que es cómica porque ha perdido todo su sentido del humor. ¿Qué más puede decirse? nada. ¡Lean!

“A magic curtain, woven of legends, hung before the world. Cervantes sent Don Quixote journeying and tore through the curtain. The world opened before the knight-errant in all the comical nakedness of its prose.” In this thought-provoking, endlessly enlightening, and entertaining essay on the art of the novel, renowned author Milan Kundera suggests that “the curtain” represents a ready-made perception of the world that each of us has—a pre-interpreted world. The job of the novelist, he argues, is to rip through the curtain and reveal what it hides. Here an incomparable literary artist cleverly sketches out his personal view of the history and value of the novel in Western civilization. In doing so, he celebrates a prose form that possesses the unique ability to transcend national and language boundaries in order to reveal some previously unknown aspect of human existence.

When The Unbearable Lightness of Being was first published in English, it was hailed as "a work of the boldest mastery, originality, and richness" by critic Elizabeth Hardwick and named one of the best books of 1984 by the New York Times Book Review. It went on to win the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction and quickly became an international bestseller. Twenty years later, the novel has established itself as a modern classic. To commemorate the anniversary of its first English-language publication, HarperCollins is proud to offer a special hardcover edition. A young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing; one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover -- these are the two couples whose story is told in this masterful novel. Controlled by day, Tereza''s jealousy awakens by night, transformed into ineffably sad death-dreams, while Tomas, a successful surgeon, alternates loving devotion to the dependent Tereza with the ardent pursuit of other women. Sabina, an independent, free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals -- of parents, husband, country, love itself -- whereas her lover, the intellectual Franz, loses all because of his earnest goodness and fidelity. In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence we feel, says the novelist, "the unbearable lightness of being" -- not only as the consequence of our private acts but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine. This magnificent novel encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy, and embraces, it seems, all aspects of human existence. It juxtaposes geographically distant places (Prague, Geneva, Paris, Thailand, the United States, a forlorn Bohemian village); brilliant and playful reflections (on "eternal return," on kitsch, on man and animals -- Tomas and Tereza have a beloved doe named Karenin); and a variety of styles (from the farcical to the elegiac) to take its place as perhaps the major achievement of one of the world''s truly great writers.

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 novel.

El tema de La vida está en otra parte es el destino de un poeta, marcado desde su adolescencia por el signo de Rimbaud, que vive en el seno de una sociedad estalinista, en la que su conciencia deberá pactar con el humanismo oficial hasta llegar a la colaboración con las actividades policiales. En esta paradoja trágica, la Historia se encarga de sumergirnos en una atmósfera de ironía kafkiana. Como señala Carlos Fuentes: «Milan Kundera, el otro K de Checoslovaquia, no necesita acudir a forma alegórica alguna para provocar la extrañeza y la incomodidad con la que Franz Kafka invadió de formas luminosas un mundo que ya existía sin saberlo. Ahora, el mundo de Kafka sabe que existe. Los personajes de Kundera no necesitan amanecer convertidos en insectos porque la historia de la Europa central se encargó de demostrarle que un hombre no necesita ser un insecto para ser tratado como un insecto.» Obra maestra de la actual narrativa europea, La vida está en otra parte ha revelado al público hispánico a uno de los grandes escritores de hoy.

The author initially intended to call this novel The Lyrical Age. The lyrical age, according to Kundera, is youth, and this novel, above all, is an epic of adolescence; an ironic epic that tenderly erodes sacrosanct values: childhood, motherhood, revolution, and even poetry. Jaromil is in fact a poet. His mother made him a poet and accompanies him (figuratively) to his love bed and (literally) to his deathbed. A ridiculous and touching character, horrifying and totally innocent ("innocence with its bloody smile"!), Jaromil is at the same time a true poet. He''s no creep, he''s Rimbaud. Rimbaud entrapped by the communist revolution, entrapped in a somber farce.

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.

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 home to his wife. Games, fantasies, and schemes abound in all the stories while different characters react in varying ways to the sudden release of erotic impulses.

There are situations in which we fail for a moment to recognize the person we are with, in which the identity of the other is erased while we simultaneously doubt our own. This also happens with couples--indeed, above all with couples, because lovers fear more than anything else "losing sight" of the loved one. With stunning artfulness in expanding and playing variations on the meaningful moment, Milan Kundera has made this situation--and the vague sense of panic it inspires--the very fabric of his new novel. Here brevity goes hand in hand with intensity, and a moment of bewilderment marks the start of a labyrinthine journey during which the reader repeatedly crosses the border between the real and the unreal, between what occurs in the world outside and what the mind creates in its solitude. Of all contemporary writers, only Kundera can transform such a hidden and disconcerting perception into the material for a novel, one of his finest, most painful, and most enlightening. Which, surprisingly, turns out to be a love story.

Milan Kundera''s lightest novel, a divertimento, an opera buffa, Slowness is also the first of this author''s fictional works to have been written in French. Disconcerted and enchanted, the reader follows the narrator of Slowness through a midsummer''s night in which two tales of seduction, separated by more than two hundred years, interweave and oscillate between the sublime and the comic. Underlying this libertine fantasy is a profound meditation on contemporary life: about the secret bond between slowness and memory, about the connection between our era''s desire to forget and the way we have given ourselves over to the demon of speed. And about "dancers" possessed by the passion to be seen, for whom life is merely a perpetual show emptied of every intimacy and every joy.