Unbearable Lightness of Being MK PDF
Preview Unbearable Lightness of Being MK
"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
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