I had never heard of Milan Kundera. The ramblings of a friend as to how she was unable to understand the movie "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" led me to google the fascinating title. What I hit upon was the book by Kundera. It seemed acclaimed and the title was, as I have mentioned, fascinating, so I ordered it, received it, shelved it and picked it up a couple of weeks back.
The teaser on the back cover says that Kundera talks about "irreconcilable love and infidelities". In my opinion this summary limits the breadth of what Kundera is talking about in this novel but it gives us a taste of the more alluring topics that he covers. "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" is also a misleading title to the book since this phenomenon is the experience of just one of the four main characters that make the story. The book mainly expounds on various philosophies regarding preferences and differences. It's about individuality and the need to see consistency, the need to find the second half of your hermaphrodite self. Kundera pours forth a profusion of ideas, each of which is inane, each incomplete and each real. Somewhere he strikes a cord with his reader. The four characters that he uses as his tools for the task are at times inconsistent but the reader is able to relate to them as parts of himself in some capacity or the other. This book truly deserves to be more popular than it already is.
The exact plot of the story would be difficult to outline in a short space primarily because of the diversity it explores. The story has four protagonists : Tomas, Tereza, Sabina and Franz in decreasing order of amount of text devoted to their characters. Each has his own peculiarities and his own preferences. Tomas is a womanising surgeon who does not believe in the oneness of sexual intercourse and love. Tereza is a woman in search of her individuality and someone who provides her with it. Sabina is a painter who is obsessed with betrayal. Franz is a professor who romanticises about being in a grand march and the approval of the woman he loves. There is the background theme of Russian invasion of Czech and the anti-Communist feelings of the population; the persecution of the intelligentia and their revolt in the face of a apathetic regime.
Kundera's charm lies in the way he has managed to intertwine the love lives of the protagonists with a political satire. His style of writing is enchanting and engrossing. The book is modelled so crisply that you never feel anything drag for too long. Kundera also overcomes the unintentional boredom that is typical of philosophical books. In all, this was a very good read. Probably I will pick another one of his some time.
The exact plot of the story would be difficult to outline in a short space primarily because of the diversity it explores. The story has four protagonists : Tomas, Tereza, Sabina and Franz in decreasing order of amount of text devoted to their characters. Each has his own peculiarities and his own preferences. Tomas is a womanising surgeon who does not believe in the oneness of sexual intercourse and love. Tereza is a woman in search of her individuality and someone who provides her with it. Sabina is a painter who is obsessed with betrayal. Franz is a professor who romanticises about being in a grand march and the approval of the woman he loves. There is the background theme of Russian invasion of Czech and the anti-Communist feelings of the population; the persecution of the intelligentia and their revolt in the face of a apathetic regime.
Kundera's charm lies in the way he has managed to intertwine the love lives of the protagonists with a political satire. His style of writing is enchanting and engrossing. The book is modelled so crisply that you never feel anything drag for too long. Kundera also overcomes the unintentional boredom that is typical of philosophical books. In all, this was a very good read. Probably I will pick another one of his some time.
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