The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Summary

A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon, a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing.  His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals--while her other lover, earnest, faithful, and good, stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped  by irrevocable choices and fortuitous events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. whence we feel "the unbearable lightness of being."
A major achievement from one of the world's truly great writers. Milan Kundera's magnificent novel of passion and politics, infidelity and ideas, encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy, illuminating all aspects of human existence.

Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Published in 1999 by Harper Perennial Modern Classics) - 314 pages.

Personal Opinion

“The Unbearable Lightness of Being” is a novel about love and politics in Czechoslovakia under the Communist Regime between 1968 and 1980. The stories of Tomas, Tereza, Sabina, Franz and the unforgettable Karenin (the mascot) are framed by the author's thought-provoking commentaries and reflections on emotion, love, reason, oppression, god, art, the horror of "kitsch", death, sex, insecurities, boredom.

Tomas, a skilled surgeon who ends up as a window-washer, is the hero of the book and not a very likable character: he is a creepy, calculated/cerebral guy who is also a sex addict, with more conquests than Florentino Ariza (for those who read Latin-American literature), but without his romantic "heart". However, his many tribulations living under Communism enlighten the reader on life during the years of the Russian invasion of that country. Despite all his faults, we see Tomas in the last chapter under a slightly better light as he gets some redemption. The chapter about the death of Karenin awakens deep feelings and tenderness for Tereza and to a certain extent for Tomas.

The other characters include Tereza who is Tomas’s wife, an insecure, needy woman who is totally under the spell of her romantic love for Tomas. Growing up, she had a difficult relationship with her mother that crippled her; she works in a bar and takes photographs of the street of Prague during the Russian invasion, photographs that are sadly used later to identify dissidents. Sabine is Tomas's main mistress. She is a painter and a more likable character that remains true to herself. Franz is Sabina's lover, a dreamer of sorts that takes part in radical protests and never seems to find a deep purpose for his life but imagines it to be Sabina. He dies at the hands of some muggers. He is paralyzed shortly before his death and ends up being cared for by his wife who finds meaning on his death, while Franz is experiencing the horror of the end of his life with a wife he didn't love.

The novel is mainly about the individual lives of these four people against the backdrop of a huge political movement. Everything is changing, but their main concern remains to find purpose in life and finding or feeling loved. It is to a certain extent about the lightness and heaviness in our commitments with each other. This book is worth reading.

My score (1-5):

About the Author:

Milan Kundera., Kundera was born in 1929 in Brno, Czechoslovakia, to a middle-class family. His father, Ludvík Kundera (1891–1971), was an important Czech musicologist and pianist who served as the head of the Janáček Music Academy in Brno from 1948 to 1961. His mother was Milada Kunderová (born Janošíková). Milan learned to play the piano from his father; he later studied musicology and musical composition. Musicological influences and references can be found throughout his work; he has even included musical notation in the text to make a point. Kundera is a cousin of Czech writer and translator Ludvík Kundera. He belonged to the generation of young Czechs who had had little or no experience of the pre-war democratic Czechoslovak Republic. Their ideology was greatly influenced by the experiences of World War II and the German occupation. Still in his teens, he joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia which seized power in 1948. He completed his secondary school studies in Brno at Gymnázium třída Kapitána Jaroše in 1948. He studied literature and aesthetics at the Faculty of Arts at Charles University in Prague. After two terms, he transferred to the Film Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague where he first attended lectures in film direction and script writing.

In 1950, his studies were briefly interrupted by political interferences. He and writer Jan Trefulka were expelled from the party for "anti-party activities." Trefulka described the incident in his novella Pršelo jim štěstí (Happiness Rained On Them, 1962). Kundera also used the incident as an inspiration for the main theme of his novel Žert (The Joke, 1967). After Kundera graduated in 1952, the Film Faculty appointed him a lecturer in world literature. In 1956 Milan Kundera was readmitted into the Party. He was expelled for the second time in 1970. Kundera, along with other reform communist writers such as Pavel Kohout, was partly involved in the 1968 Prague Spring. This brief period of reformist activities was crushed by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. Kundera remained committed to reforming Czechoslovak communism, and argued vehemently in print with fellow Czech writer Václav Havel, saying, essentially, that everyone should remain calm and that "nobody is being locked up for his opinions yet," and "the significance of the Prague Autumn may ultimately be greater than that of the Prague Spring." Finally, however, Kundera relinquished his reformist dreams and moved to France in 1975. He taught for a few years in the University of Rennes. He was stripped of Czechoslovak citizenship in 1979; he has been a French citizen since 1981.

He maintains contact with Czech and Slovak friends in his homeland, but rarely returns and always does so incognito.

Source: Wikipedia