Unbearable Lightness of Being MK

322 Pages·1969·1.99 MB·English

by  Kundera Milan

"The Unbearable Lightnen· of Being is both a love story and a novel of ideas....

Witty, seductive, serious ...also full of feeling and enormously experienced in the

tricky interplay of sex and politics .... One of the finest and most consistently

interesting novelists in Europe or America, [Kundera] has a powerful tale to tell."

-Richard Locke, The WashinKton Post Book World

"Few contemporary writers have succeeded as Kundera has in combining a cool,

elegant, formal objectivity with warm , intimate (almost embarrassingly intimate)

pictures of the imperfect realities of adult love. Kundcra's heroes may be Don

Juans, but they are shy, apologetic ones; his women arc intensely physical beings,

but they are also as quirkily intelligent and stubbornly independent as his men."

-Edmund White, The Nation

"Let me say it simply: The Unbearable Lightness of Being is one of the greatest

novels of the twentieth century, and with its publication Kundera has firmly

established himself as the world's greatest living writer."

-John Podhoretz. Th.e WashinK;on Times

"Outstanding .

Burning compassion,extraordinary intelligence, and dazzling

artistry."

-Thomas DiPietro. Commonweal

"A work of large scale and complexity, symphonically arranged ... political and

philosophical, erotic and spiritual, funny and profound. ... There is no wiser

observer now writing of the multifarious relations of men and women .. ..

Kundera's intelligence is both speculative and playful. The Unbearable Lightness
•
of Being is his best novel yet."

-Frances Taliaferro. The Wall Street Journal

"Mr.Kundera's novel, composed in the spirit of the late quartets of Beethoven, is

concerned with the opposing elements of freedom and necessity among a quartet of

entangled lovers."

-The New Yorker

"Encyclopaedic and epigrammatic, profound and playful, Kundera explores the

intersection of the sublime and the ridiculous to give us an important chapter in the

·

moral history of our time."

-Judges' citation, 1984 Los AnKeles

Times Book Prize

"With cunning, wit and elegiac sadness. Milan Kundera. the celebrated Czechoslo­

vak emigre writer, expresses the trap the world has become."

-New York Times Book Re1•iew citation,

15 Best Books of 1984
Also by Milan Kundera

THE JOKE

LAUGHABLE LOVES

LIFE IS ELSEWHERE

THE FAREWELL PARTY

THE BOOK OF LAUGHTER AND FORGETTING

JACQUES AND HIS MASTER
MILAN KUNDCRA

The Unbearable

Lightness

of Being

Translated from the Czech by Michael Henry Heim

PERENNIAL LIBRARY
LLJ

HBiper & Row, Publishers, New York

Grand Rapids, Philadelphia, St. Louis, San Francisco

London, Singapore, Sydnaey, Tokyo, Toronto
Portions of this novel have appeared, in somewhat different form, in The New Yorker.

A hardcover edition of this book is published by Harper & Row,

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING.

Publishers, Inc.

English translation copyright © 1984 by Harper &

Row, Publishers, Inc. Thmslated from Nesnesitelna lehkost"byti, copyright© 1984 by Milan

Kundera. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book

may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in

the case of brief quotations embodied in critical ar ticles and reviews. For information

address Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, N . Y. 10022.

First HARPER COLOPHON edition published 1985. Reissued in PERENNIAL LIBRARY edition 1987.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Kundera , Milan.

The unbearable lightness of being.

"Perennial Library"

I. Heim , Michael Henry. II. Title.

PG5039.21.U6U5

ISBN

1987

0-06-091465-3 (Pbk.)

891.8'635 83-48363
CONTI:NTS

PART ONE

Lightness and Weight

PART TWO

Soul and Body

PART THREE Words Misunderstood
PART FOUR Soul and Body
PART FIVE Lightness and Weight
PART SIX The Grand March

PART SEVEN

Karenin's Smile

1

37

79

129

173

241

279
PART ONE

Lightness ar1d Weight