The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel » (Deluxe)

Milan Kundera's study of philosophy is evident in his books, which are part meditation, part love story and part satire. In novels such as The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, he asks readers to consider not just his characters, but questions of history and human existence.

A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon, a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals—while her other lover, earnest, faithful, and good, stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and fortuitous events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence we feel "the unbearable lightness of being."

A major achievement from one of the world's truly great writers, Milan Kundera's magnificent novel of passion and politics, infidelity and ideas, encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy, illuminating all aspects of human existence.

Janet Malcolm

Brilliant . . . A work of high modernist playfulness and deep pathos. —New York Review of Books

Part One Lightness and Weight 1
Part Two Soul and Body 37
Part Three Words Misunderstood 79
Part Four Soul and Body 129
Part Five Lightness and Weight 173
Part Six The Grand March 241
Part Seven Karenin's Smile 279