Rating: 
Summary: let's put on some airs
Review: This book is just plain awful. Avoid at all costs. Sweet 'n' low is less artificial than this book. I mean come on!! If you are gonna make up a story, at least use a little imagination and invention. *this is a story about absolutely nothing, with no subtext, no entertainment* Why do people praise this book? Probably the same people who go out and buy some tom waitts (another way overrated snake oil seller) cds cuz they heard he's cool. Kundera is about 75 (he's probably older - just lying about his age) so hopefully he'll kick the bucket soon, and not leave behind any manuscripts. How long will we let Kundera serve us a number two on toast and call it gourmet? Stop the madness!! This book bites.
Rating: 
Summary: no title
Review: This is the first book that I read by Milan Kundera and it turned me onto several of his other works that were equally thought-provoking. Rather then sit here and write a pedantic review I will simply say that this book is a must for any reader who enjoys questioning everything and extracting those grains of truth from around us that generally seem so elusive. Following this I read "Identity" and "Book of Laughter and Forgetting" and was impressed by both, yet neither of them quite reached the level of "...Lightness of Being." If you like authors also in this vein (although I am sure some would debate me on this) I would also recommend novels by Italo Calvino.
Rating:
Summary: The Importance of Chance
Review: "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" is a masterpiece of existential/absurdist literature. When we stop and dissect our lives, we begin to see how many chance occurrences have shaped the paths we follow. But if everything, or almost everything, is chance, then why are we still compulsively drawn to certain people and/or situations? The element of chance in life is certainly comic; it attains the lightness Kundera wants to express. However, the lightness is unbearable because life is, for Kundera, essentially tragic. "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" is a tragicomedy, and occupied Eastern Europe is a perfect setting for a novel of this nature. One question: Why would anyone leave the freedom of the West to return to an occupied Czechoslovakia? If you understand the dynamics of this question, you will have a strong grasp of Kundera's vision.
Rating:
Summary: Perfection
Review: If you only read one book by Kundera, you must choose The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I am not certain who translated the copy I read, but this is a magnificently complex story that is beautifully written. A top ten on my list! Genius.
Rating: 
Summary: Dark
Review: Better than the film, of course. Dark insight into what can become of a relationship.
Rating:
Summary: Psychoanalytical, sardonic and brilliant!
Review: Although Freud has been criticized by many over the past century on everything from his methodology to his conclusions, there is still a great deal of respect for the basic premise on which he built his theories; namely that life is, indeed, difficult. Difficult because it's filled with unfulfilled promises, ambiguous emotions and mental conflict over the even the most trivial things. This is a fact that theoreticians, artists, writers and other searchers have struggled to capture over the centuries, with mixed results. This is also the foundation on which Milan Kundera has constructed his masterpiece, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"Kundera's magnum opus is, on a superficial level, nothing else than a trivial relationship drama (When the movie was filmed, it was this trivial surface that the director took hold of with disastrous results. In other words, avoid at all costs!). But it is the triviality, the unbearable lightness, which Kundera uses as his inspiration to generate a novel that savours of equal doses of wit and tragedy. Ranging on subjects from eroticism to faecal (sic) fantasies whilst passing creationism, religion, relationships and warfare, the novel is paradoxically slow and quick in its pace. This is a consequence of Kunderas method of characterization. The novel has been accused of being weak within this area, but that is missing the author's point entirely. Kundera uses only physical and psychological actions in revealing character. The latter is indeed a delight to partake as it mainly focuses on the fantasies and desires of the central characters. The sole use of this portrayal technique creates a pace that on a superficial level is excruciatingly slow, whilst on a mental level is quick sometimes to the point of confusion. The recommended method of reading "Unbearable..." is at a tempo of a chapter per day. That is, if one wants to ensure maximum extradition of the plethora of ideas that has gone into making this well-crafted piece of work. Speaking of chapters, the division of the novel into small and choppy chapters that, in turn, are divided into labelled sections ("Lightness and weight", "Words misunderstood", "Soul and Body" etc), creates a sense of self importance that supports one of the central themes of "Unbearable...", the belief that each human is the master of his or her own universe. The pretentiously labelled sections underscore this by creating a biblical feel to something that is, in essence, little more than the thoughts of the author voiced by a collection of characters. Someone once said that comedy was merely tragedy plus time. Well, what Kundera proves in this novel is that the ultimate benefactor of time, is detachment. Detachment to people, feelings and ideas. Detachment, and the struggles for or against it, is really the core of what "Unbearable..." is about. The characters detachment form each other and the society in which they live. The author's detached, to the point of deterministic, relationship to his subjects. And, ultimately, the detachment to one's own fate. A fact that creates this elusive, unbearable, lightness of being.
Rating:
Summary: a wonderful book, for thinking
Review: This is a truly thoughtful book. It took me 3 months to read, which I think is mostly due to the incredible amount of philosophy that I may have been a little young for. It changed the way I look at life, however, which I admit is a cliche, but the ending is so powerful and reserved that it only left me with a slight edge of sadness, mostly just a feeling of peace. I definitely recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: ES MUSS SEIN¿It Must Be! (Beethoven)
Review: ...But Es könnte auch anders sein" (It could just as well be otherwise)...
With a sweeping, stunning backdrop of Communism and the Prague Spring, Kundera's book probes the questions surrounding personal identity and individuality and what shapes lives and how people are robbed of individuality. As an entire society struggles to be recognised as an independent entity under threat of Russian tanks and violence, the characters seek individuality in their own ways. Indeed, this individuality is personified by the way each character perceives and feels love.
The story of Tomas and Tereza, Sabina and Franz, as people, is compelling and beautiful (and tragic) enough. Kundera's writing style and rich, philosophical prose is all the more rewarding. It took me years to finally sit down and read this book, and I regret all the wasted time. The book is far more rewarding than the film of the same name because the prose is so deep and worthwhile. The film, too, is good because Lena Olin and Juliette Binoche are luminous as always. Daniel Day Lewis plays Tomas well because his real persona seems to fit that of Tomas so perfectly.
Tomas is a doctor in Prague and happens to meet the woman who will be his wife, Tereza, when he travels out of town for some sort of conference. They meet by a number of chance occurrences, and the novel Anna Karenina is instrumental in bringing them together. "Early in the novel that Tereza clutched under her arm when she went to visit Tomas, Anna meets Vronsky in curious circumstances: they are at the railway station when someone is run over by a train. At the end of the novel, Anna throws herself under a train. This symmetrical composition-the same motif appears at the beginning and at the end-may seem quite "novelistic" to you, and I am willing to agree, but only on the condition that you refrain from reading such notions as "fictive", "fabricated", and "untrue to life" into the word "novelistic". Because human lives are composed in precisely such a fashion." "But is not an event in fact more significant and noteworthy the greater the number of fortuities necessary to bring it about?" "Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us."
Tereza deeply believed in these episodes of chance and fate, believing their meeting was destined to be so. The more scientific Tomas was more inclined to believe, "It could just as well be otherwise." Tereza did not know at first that Tomas was a reckless womanizer and that this would come to define both of them as their relationship progressed and in fact would be what further robbed Tereza of her individuality. Early in the prose, you learn that Tereza's mother was cruel and deprived her of privacy and modesty. Tereza's adult life is permeated by a sense of needing to feel different from and unique from others. With the love of a man, like Tomas, she expected she would find that he loved her and her alone, but his ceaseless, obsessive womanizing turned her into just another woman, just another body for him to use, in no way unique from any other woman in the world. Tereza had nightmares about her position. "She had come to him to escape her mother's world, a world where all bodies were equal. She has come to him to make her body unique, irreplaceable. But he, too, has drawn an equal sign between her and the rest of them: he kissed them all alike, stroked them all alike, made no, absolutely no distinction between Tereza's body and the other bodies. He had sent her back into the world she tried to escape, sent her to march naked with the other naked women." Tereza began to see life as a concentration camp-people living cramped together constantly in a "complete obliteration of privacy."
Tomas had many lovers, but among the most important (and central to the book) is Sabina. Sabina desired to disobey her father: "Communism was merely another father, a father equally strict and limited, a father who forbade her love..." Sabina, like Tomas, could not be confined to one lover. She wanted to disobey convention. Not only did she have Tomas, she had many other lovers, including another central character to the book, Franz. Franz is from the West (I cannot recall whether he is from Austria or Switzerland, but I suspect the latter). For Franz, "(Love) It meant a longing to put himself at the mercy of his partner. He who gives himself up like a prisoner of war must give up his weapons as well. And deprived in advance of defence against a possible blow, he cannot help wondering when the blow will fall. That is why I can say that for Franz, love meant the constant expectation of a blow." Franz believed, "Culture is perishing in overproduction, in an avalanche of words, in the madness of quantity. That's why one banned book in your (Sabina's) former country means infinitely more than the billions of words spewed out by our universities."
Eventually Sabina and Tereza meet one another, and they form an unlikely friendship, and they both share the need for privacy that drives Tereza's search for identity. The book describes a private and intimate scene in which Tereza (who is a photographer) and Sabina photograph one another, in various states of undress. They see one another for the individuals they are, not through the lens of Tomas or external barriers.
Recurring images appear throughout the prose to illustrate different people's places in other people's lives, their relationships, perhaps. Kundera writes, "While people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and exchange motifs (the way Tomas and Sabina exchanged the motif of the bowler hat), but if they meet when they are older, like Franz and Sabina, their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them." Kundera goes on to include a "dictionary of misunderstood words" which describes how words can be interpreted differently by different people depending on so many factors. (As an example, WOMAN, "not every woman was worthy of being called a woman."
The characters all played roles with regard to the revolution that swept through Prague and eventually was crushed by Russian tanks. Tereza reflected on their naïveté. They had been so stupid, spending their days taking pictures of tanks and subversion. They believed they were risking their lives for their country when in fact the evidence they produced only helped the Russians in the end when the Russian overpowered the revolt.
Many people tried to claim that ignorance about what Russian Communism entailed would serve as an excuse, but ignorance, as Kundera explains, was no excuse for Oedipus. "Whether they knew or didn't know is not the main issue; the main issue is whether a man is innocent because he didn't know. Is a fool on the throne relieved of all responsibility merely because he is a fool?"
"...Oedipus did not know he was sleeping with his own mother, yet when he realized what had happened, he did not feel innocent. Unable to stand the sight of the misfortune he had wrought by "not knowing", he put out his eyes and wandered blind away from Thebes."
Everyone was suspect and everyone ready to hide from the ideals that began the revolt in the first place. Tomas was reprimanded at work and was told to print a retraction to an article or letter he had written, and he faced an odd decision as well as unusual reactions from those around him, "And suddenly Tomas grasped a strange fact: everyone was smiling at him, everyone wanted him to write the retraction: it would make everyone happy! The people with the first type of reaction would be happy because by inflating cowardice, he would make their actions seem commonplace and thereby give them back their lost honor. The people with the second type of reaction, who had come to consider their honor a special privilege never to be yielded, nurtured a secret love for the cowards, for without them their courage would soon erode into a trivial, monotonous grind admired by no one."
Kundera delves into various subject matter, such as the matter of excrement, "Shit is a more onerous theological problem than is evil. Since God gave man freedom, we can, if need be, accept the idea that He is not responsible for man's crimes. The responsibility for shit, however, rests entirely with Him, the Creator of man...; The fact that until recently the word 'shit' appeared in print as s--- has nothing to do with moral considerations. You can't claim that shit is immoral, after all! The objection to shit is a metaphysical one. The daily defecation session is daily proof of the unacceptability of Creation. Either/or: shit is acceptable (in which case don't lock yourself in the bathroom!) or we are created in an unacceptable manner." He also pontificates on how the animal world and the treatment of animals serves as an apt commentary on people, "The very beginning of Genesis tells us that God created man in order to give him dominion over fish and fow
Rating:
Summary: a now even older Europe
Review: This book puts a somewhat lascivious grin on my face. The light touch that Kundera has is endearing and it is the perfect touch for conveying the feeling of youthful revolution under Communist oppression. Something wild seemed to have bloomed in Prague in the late sixties as it did elsewhere in other countries but in Prague it took on an especially poignant air. To read the playwrites of the time is to see that humor and satire were the weapons of the day and Kundera captures the sense of laughter in the face of tyranny which in the beginning of the book is an unseen Kafkaesque committee of spies that have settled in to rule the land. The worst part is that here the Kafkaesque is no exaggeration for neighbors and fellow workers are informing on each other(later the tyranny becomes all too real when Soviet tanks enter Prague). Kundera captures the absurdity of this moment in time as only a student of the Central European Novel can(Kundera pays homage to his favorites in Art of the Novel). Perfectly balanced on their respective tightropes are Sabrina, Teresa, Tomas, and Franz. All of them are charming. This is one of the few novels that tells many stories and each one is equally interesting. The philosophy that threads these lives together is Kundera's and there is a lot of it. It is a philosophy of the moment because at any given moment the world can change. You may not agree with every single word that his swinging brain has to offer but it is all very readable and at the very least provocative . If you do disagree with him you will find you have to admit he is an interesting person to disagree with. The sex is fun too. I would love to read a sequel to this work, and I have never said that before of any other work. One of the few contemporary works that I think deserves its reputation. Intellectual and sensual, theres a combo I can live with.
Rating:
Summary: 10 starts
Review: if "Harry Potter" has 5 starts, then this book deserves TEN starts!
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