The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Kundera has raised the novel of ideas to a new level of dreamlike lyricism and emotional intensity.” — Jim Miller, Newsweek

“Kundera is a virtuoso . . . A work of the boldest mastery, originality, and richness.” — Elizabeth Hardwick, Vanity Fair

“Brilliant . . . A work of high modernist playfulness and deep pathos.” — Janet Malcolm, New York Review of Books

“With cunning wit, and elegiac sadness, Milan Kundera, the celebrated Czechoslovak emigre writer, expresses the trap the world has become.” — New York Times Book Review

“Far more than a conventional novel. It is a meditation on life, on the erotic, on the nature of men and women and love . . . full of telling details, truths large and small, to which just about every reader will respond.” — People

“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 Angeles Times Book Prize

“The Unbearable Lightness 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.” — Washington Post Book World

“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.” — Wall Street Journal