“So here I was. Home again after all those years.” This is Milan Kundera’s first novel, and of all the one’s I’ve read it’s more or less the most straightforward. It’s not straightforward, but the conditions of the plot are. We meet Ludvik in the opening pages returning home to a small town in Moravia some seventeen years since he’s last been there. We know something has defined this return in ways that have complicated it, but we’re not year sure how. We also learn […]

During the Cold War, a Prague surgeon meets a waitress and spends a night with her. A lifelong relationship begins, although the two protagonists could not be more different in their views on love. In a subplot we also follow one of the surgeon’s mistresses, who is a successful painter, and her married lover, a Swiss university professor. The historical background is shaped by the Prague Spring and the following invasion of the ČSSR by the armies of the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact […]