A good Europop lit-fic offering, yet it feels a bit outmoded now, much like Snap! or 2Unlimited. However, it still serves as compelling fodder for those philosophising undergrads who have higher aspirations than just erotic encounters with their right hands. The narrator is droll, sardonic, wise, and almost unbearably smug. In fact, I seriously considered using the line The Unbearable Smugness of Being, but then I decided not to. Drat! Also, I have vivid memories of the film version. In it, Juliette Binoche's underpants ride up her crack in a most pleasing manner for the teenage male viewer. I'm quite sure that when Kundera wrote this novel, he never imagined his expansive intellectual vision would be reduced to such reminiscences of cinematic titillation. I'm certain he'd appreciate this review's emphasis on tawdriness rather than a complex discourse on Czech politics. I'm sure of it. So, this novel hasn't become a personal favourite. It was solid intelligent lit-fic, with some repetitious parts, an ambitious structure, and a scattershot plot. I got tripped up by the abundance of quotable lines and overlooked the endless use of the catchphrase Es muss sein! I didn't say a word when the Tomas plot turned into Confessions of a Window Cleaner (Manny's favourite book, or so I'm told). I even cut Tereza some slack for being a self-loathing dormouse, and the other characters for being adulterous imbeciles who intellectualise their childish behaviour and hopscotch across Europe at the first sign of trouble. I think art and adultery can make for entertaining bedfellows. But if someone fellates you at the opera, is that somehow less damaging than getting fellated in a motel? Kundera doesn't address this question precisely, but it would make for a great final book. He's 82 now. Somehow, that makes this review seem even more disrespectful. I think I'll just stop here.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a profound and captivating novel that delves deep into the human condition. Milan Kundera's masterful storytelling takes us on a journey through the lives of four complex characters. Tomas, a womanizing surgeon, Tereza, his mistress-turned-wife, Franz, a lecturer, and Sabina, an artist. The novel is set against the backdrop of the historical events of 1968 in Czechoslovakia, adding a layer of depth and significance to the personal dramas.

Kundera's writing style is both philosophical and poetic, as he explores themes such as love, freedom, betrayal, and the meaning of life. The narrative is non-linear, which allows for a more nuanced and multi-faceted exploration of the characters and their relationships. The philosophical digressions add another dimension to the novel, making it not just a story, but a thought-provoking exploration of the human experience.

The characters in the novel are all well-developed and relatable, each with their own flaws and desires. Tomas' womanizing ways, Tereza's insecurities, Franz's idealism, and Sabina's addiction to betrayal all make for a fascinating and engaging read. The themes of lightness and heaviness are explored through the characters' experiences, as they struggle to find meaning and purpose in a world that often seems chaotic and unpredictable.

In conclusion, The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a must-read novel for anyone who enjoys thought-provoking literature. It is a timeless classic that continues to resonate with readers today, offering insights into the human condition that are as relevant now as they were when the novel was first published.

\\n  The Weightless Burden of Non-being\\n

There are only a handful of books that bestow upon the reader the complete liberty to lose oneself and then find oneself again. Despite the thematic title Kundera selected, this asymmetric, anachronistic, perplexing, and intriguing masterpiece can be approached from a million different angles. It's as if one sits and constructs one's own book within one's head, filled with one's own thoughts.

Regarding the motivic question (Which is superior, a burden to drive you or a lightness to set you free?), I respond: Should we even pose this question?

I do so because, the moment we compel ourselves to choose one or the other, we enter into an impasse where, having chosen one, we constantly yearn to shift to the other side. Kundera, to a greater or lesser extent, forces his characters to make a choice, and ultimately, all of them endure melancholy interspersed with moments of happiness. Tomas and Tereza live with the weight of compassion and love, while Franz and Sabina live with the lightness of freedom. Regrettably, like these characters, in our own lives too, we don't truly have the option to choose between the two, do we? We are always the victims. Victims of love or hatred, truth or lies, passions or fleeting affairs, and above all, of circumstances or vertigo.

The most remarkable aspect of Kundera's writing is that it traverses in unusual orbits. He commences by relating something about a character at a particular moment and then leaps to a different time and a different character, and somehow miraculously converges these events while discussing something entirely else. It's not strange at all. In fact, you'll frequently find yourself exclaiming, "I like what you did there." He highlights some of his personal beliefs from time to time and constantly reminds us, at various junctures, of how right he is.

Turning to the story, during the most arduous period of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the characters mainly suffer from their own psyches rather than the invasion itself. Certainly, it altered the circumstances, but even if the communist turmoil had not been present, they would still have been the victims (as I mentioned earlier). My favorite part of this novel is the third section, "Words Misunderstood," which in itself is sufficient to penetrate the depths of Franz's and Sabina's minds and hearts. It's nothing short of magic that, using just a few simple words, Kundera has illustrated their inherent differences that ultimately lead to their separation.

Somewhere in the middle, there is a mention of the word "Kitsch." You may find it in the dictionary, but you'll never truly understand what it means until you read this book. And this discovery will stay with you forever.

Allow me to quote something from this book that remained with me for a considerable length of time:

"The pleasure suffusing his body called for darkness. That darkness was pure, perfect, thoughtless, visionless; that darkness was without end, without borders; that darkness was the infinite we each carry within us. (\\n  Yes, if you're looking for infinity, just close your eyes!\\n)\\"

Warning: This book has long-term aftereffects.

Is it light or heavy or both?
Is it a novel, a psychological analysis, a philosophy of life, or a reconsideration of the concepts of life?
Is it a part of life or all of life?
At first, it was my first readings of Kundera, and it won't be the last after reading this novel. First of all, I was impressed by Kundera's style of narration. To be honest, I would call it "intelligent storytelling". Yes, it has a certain amount of intelligence that makes you think deeply after every line you read. In fact, every line whispers in your ear with a sense of urgency. So, I didn't feel bored or routine like other novels. Instead, I felt it whispering in my ear with the details of the story. He respects and values the reader in every line and doesn't miss its essence. In every situation or scene he describes, he simplifies it for you and always reminds you of all the details he has told you before. Just as he said, "Yes, I wrote this sentence in the first chapter." He really respected me as a reader, so I respected him. He didn't treat me as just a recipient, but interacted with me, warning me here and reminding me of what I might have forgotten there. He didn't separate himself from the events like a spectator, but immersed himself in the events with me, sharing the joy with me while reading.

In short, the narrative line of the novel focuses on four main characters, the most important of which is Tomas, the protagonist of the novel. These characters vary between lightness and heaviness. The novel takes place against the background of "heavy" political events, such as the occupation of Russia by the Czech Republic during World War II, and the spread of the "heavy" communist system as he believes.

The character I interacted with the most was Tereza, that heavy woman who failed to wear the light clothes that Tomas always wore. To be honest, Kundera is brilliant in embodying the image of the traitor as a person who enjoys lightness, although sins are what weigh a person the most.

What impressed me the most - no, amazed me - was the third chapter, which dealt with a detailed explanation of the concepts between Tomas and Sabina. Although it lacks any literary aspect, it added a lot of meaningful and intellectual weight to the novel - because of its new way of treatment - and was very, very brilliant in what it carried of meanings.

What bothered me the most was that I stopped reading it for a while and then went back to it and finished it. I will read it again in English and maybe start it again from now on.

To be honest,
this review doesn't do justice to the novel. I wrote it in a hurry, and maybe I will come back to write another review later because the novel has many aspects that deserve to be stopped and considered because of their brilliance and cannot be ignored.

And in the end: The novel is not a personal confession of the author, but rather a reflection on what happens to human life in the void called the world.

I give it five stars with a special thank you to Milan Kundera, who I now consider one of my favorite writers. We hope to have intelligent novelists like him.

:)

Really 3.5, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt and rounded up to 4.

This book consists of a series of anecdotes, interspersed with moments of deep and surreal introspection. There are several time jumps that disrupt the linearity. At times, this can cause some confusion, but it's not overly severe. All of these elements are part of one all-encompassing story.

Basically, it's a story about sexuality and the Cold War in Czechoslovakia. The first two sections were a bit challenging for me to get into. However, either I got accustomed to the writing style or the story took a turn. I had sort of resigned myself to the idea that I wouldn't end up liking it. But that definitely changed as I continued reading.

I don't think I can claim that overall this book completely blew me away. Nevertheless, it is a very interesting story about life and relationships that have been influenced by the political climate in Eastern Europe after World War II. And I'm glad that I took the time to read it.

Kundera is, without a doubt, an unconventional writer. If you're in search of fully developed characters or a seamless plot, The Unbearable Lightness of Being might not be your cup of tea. Kundera uses plot and characters more as tools or examples to expound on his philosophy of life, which is the essence of this novel. He offers a peek into his characters' lives, hits the pause button, and then delves into explaining all about what just transpired, the philosophy and psychology that drive both his characters' lives and often real lives too. In line with this format, the novel has a fragmented structure. It's easy to understand how a reader could get irritated with the author constantly getting lost in his philosophical musings. However, if you can extract some meaning from those, the novel might just work for you.

Decisions and dilemmas. Kundera's characters seem to be in pursuit of an elusive something, striving to find that perfect spot in life where they would wish to live forever. But it's challenging to determine with certainty the direction in which that perfect place lies. If they feel their current lives are suffocating, going the other way could be liberating. But is it worth leaving behind all that will be sacrificed? The moment they take a step forward, they start to feel the pull of what they just turned their backs on. Often, the choice isn't between perfection and imperfection; it's a trade-off.

The ability to shape our own lives, at least to some extent, is a power. Sometimes, it can also be a burden. Especially when there's no way of knowing what awaits us around the next corner. Do we choose to be happy today at the expense of 'What ifs..' bothering us tomorrow? Or do we endure an ordeal now in the hope that it will pay off in the future? What if we end up in a mess and can't turn back?

\\"And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not run in circles; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.\\"

Sometimes, we can only find the right answers in hindsight.

\\"We can never know what we want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.\\"

Kundera speaks of the irony of human life. Having only one life to live makes life choices difficult and burdensome. It's also because of this very fact that these life choices don't carry much weight in the grand scheme of things. And it's this irony that gives rise to the unbearable lightness of being. The only thing that alleviates us from this unbearable lightness are fortuitous events which, whether we like it or not, play a role in shaping our lives.

\\"They (human lives) are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurence (Beethoven's music, death under a train) into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual's life.\\"

Love. Kundera doesn't describe love in a poetic, all-beautiful way. What happens when one of the characters packs her life in a suitcase and leaves to be with her lover? Is there music in the air, fluttering butterflies? No. Her stomach rumbles the moment she sees her lover...because she hasn't eaten all day.

\\"If a love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi's shoulders.\\"

Finding love doesn't miraculously solve all their problems. Love is often accompanied by jealousy, mistrust, lies, deceit, and pain. Yet, they do find some strength in love and do everything they can to hold onto it.

\\"\\"Love is a battle,\\" said Marie-Claude, still smiling. \\"And I plan to go on fighting. To the end.\\"\\"

Along with these, Kundera touches on a few other themes as well. Some of them hit the mark, while there were parts that I found trite, pretentious, or simply lacking any sense. For instance, one of the characters sleeps with every other woman who crosses his path. Kundera rationalizes his physical desire and explains it as a deep-seated intellectual curiosity. Nah, I don't buy that. Then there were quotes that seemed to be trying too hard to be profound and just went over my head.

\\"Tomas did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love.

Umm, What?

Another strange thing I noticed was that the author breaks the fourth wall and tries to defend the novel. He intervenes and explains how he's not just telling a story but investigating human lives. He tells us that the characters are just figments of his imagination (so we shouldn't expect them to be realistic). He tells us that it's wrong to criticize a novel for mysterious coincidences (so we shouldn't question the unrealistic events in the plot).

Admittedly, there are some flaws, but I would have forgiven them even without the author justifying himself.

It's time we start oppressing men so they can stop writing pretentious garbage like this.

Men have long held a dominant position in many aspects of society, and sometimes their actions and words can be quite pretentious.

By oppressing them, perhaps we can make them more aware of their behavior and force them to think twice before producing such meaningless and pretentious works.

This doesn't mean we should be cruel or unjust, but rather use a certain degree of pressure to encourage them to improve their writing and communication skills.

Maybe then, we can expect to see more valuable and meaningful contributions from them, instead of the pretentious garbage that seems to be so prevalent.

It's a bold idea, but it might just be what's needed to bring about a positive change in the literary and intellectual landscape.

On occasions, human beings are often classified according to the philosophy they adopt in their existential journey.

On one hand, there are those who face life with a lightness that is practically weightless, detached from any material or emotional anchor. On the other hand, some live with such a heavy burden that at times it seems as if the world is falling upon them and there is not enough strength to keep moving forward. This dichotomy is directly related to the concept of the eternal return popularized by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, based on the endless repetition of each life and event. Every decision, error, and joy that we experience in our lives would occur infinitely again and again. This responsibility, this existential weight, can be unbearable.

Kundera dares to question this hypothesis and considers that life is a linear and finite fragment, so it has a beginning and an end. Nevertheless, this argument is not promising. A life that has not had a past replica and will not have a future replica is a life condemned to uncertainty in the face of the novelty of each act. As if this were not enough, the author opens the debate on the value of a life with an expiration date. If everything lived is already in the past, what is the meaning of our existence? In the face of this perspective, nothing seems to matter. This void, this existential lightness, can be unbearable.

All this introduction is necessary to later understand the guiding thread of the novel, which narrates the choices and consequences of four characters whose lives seem to be interrelated over the years, in a particularly动荡 period for Czechoslovakia.

These characters, the absolute protagonists of the novel, are nothing more than the guiding thread of the story. They do not manage to move us, and at times they do not even seem human. They are mere executors of their own actions, which allow the author's thesis to advance. And yet, the result works perfectly. Each one takes a philosophical attitude towards their own destiny. The mastery does not lie in the detailed analysis of their traits and personality, but in the use of individuals who allow theorizing about something much more complex such as the existence of the human being.

In addition, the structure of the novel adapts formidably to its content. Through short chapters grouped into seven parts, the narration advances and recedes from the perspective of the different characters. The same situation will have as many points of view as there are individuals involved in the scene, and the experiences of each one do not always end up coinciding.

"The Unbearable Lightness of Being" is a novel that is probably more enjoyable after reading it. The author makes a praiseworthy effort to create a fiction about a postmodern philosophical treatise. Thus, he establishes his own perspective on human existence while narrating a story of illusions, expectations, failures, and ultimately, a story of love. Life is complex and Milan Kundera seems to be clear about it. We usually learn all the fundamental concepts through opposite pairs, although our decisions end up being a combination of both. Both the existential weight and lightness are unbearable, and a life dedicated to them is unviable. But if we accept the lightness to which the human being seems condemned, we will be able to start looking for those small flashes of beauty that are within our reach and, perhaps, find the eternal return in our linear lives.

There is likely one novel that had the most significant impact on the direction of my post-graduation European backpacking trip ten years ago, which led me to Prague for two full weeks. Just before my friend Chad and I set off, he mailed me a letter and told me to get a copy of Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. "Just read it," he wrote. "Whatever else you do, just read this book. It is about everything in the world."

Already a long-time Kafka fan, I was quite receptive to another Czech with an absurd mindset telling the story of his city and, by extension, the rest of the world. The title was familiar, though not the author's name, and I rather naively mistook Kundera for a woman at first glance at the cover.

Suffice it to say, Kundera hooked me from the very first paragraph. Has any other modern novel had such a wonderfully philosophical opening? The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often puzzled other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs infinitely! What does this crazy myth signify?

In just two sentences, the very first two, Kundera not only manages to break several writing style rules (an exclamation mark followed by a direct address to the reader being the most obvious), but he also succinctly sums up one of the most challenging philosophical concepts, yet is wise enough to address it on its own terms: as a "mad myth."

From the earliest opportunity, the author is telling us that he is indeed an intellectual, that he writes energetically and playfully, and that serious Ideas with the full resonance of the basso profundo tolling out that capital "I" are the very essence of novels and are not to be stuffed, labeled, and set up high on a shelf reserved for great thoughts too refined and delicate to mix among the common crowd of characters, dialogue, and action.

Needless to say, this is a heady combination, the kind of thing that would appeal directly to a recent college graduate with literature and philosophy on the brain. And we haven't even touched on the sex yet. Kundera's books are full of sex, which is the other engine driving this dual-powered writer. There is passionate sex and routine sex, sex filled with deep emotional meaning and sex stripped down to its tangible physicality, sex as a recurring motif in one's life that illuminates greater insights into one's personality and sex as a secret door into the aesthetics of our time.

To write, as some have, that the book is primarily about erotic encounters is like saying that Beethoven was just a guy who played the piano. Instead, it is a book about tyranny, both large and small, the ones we endure and the ones we resist, the ones we submit to for love and the ones that always quietly rankle. The tyranny of kitsch, as understood by the novel, where kitsch means a subjective, sentimental folding screen that hides the sight of death. The questions that the book seeks to explore revolve around the ideas of polar opposites, such as truth and lies, love and hate (or indifference), freedom and slavery, heaviness and lightness.

The Kundera style is a very delightful patchwork. We focus on one character, that character's perceptions, that character's perspectives, in little miniatures, some essay-like, that elaborate on the character's psychology or history. Then we shift to another character and learn new things about that person, sometimes touching on the same elements we've already seen. It's like Rashomon but more expansive, drawing circles around lives and eras instead of just one night's events.

Part of what Kundera does is move the story along through one person, then go back in time and retell only some of that story focused on a second person and show how our best efforts to understand each other remain woefully inadequate. There will always be layers far below our reach. Yet at the same time, Kundera moves the story forward, stops, switches character again, and in this third instance, either goes back to person number one or switches to person number three and repeats the process, and repeats again. What emerges is rather like conflicting court testimony, with multiple moving parts simultaneously illuminating their own motivations and obscuring others'.

If there is a weakness to all of this, it is that Kundera's novels sometimes develop the quality of theoretical exercises between characters embodying certain philosophical concepts. While the author may touch the mind and the libido, the heart often remains cold. There is a sense of artificiality when you look too closely at the book's constructs, as if the author were merely using puppets to illustrate an essay. But what exactly lies behind our disagreements and disconnections from others other than different mental states? We fall out of love with someone not because of the size of her bottom or his new haircut, but because our lives shift in different directions and we can no longer think in the same cohesive way with the other person. Our ideas change. What are our wants but our ideas given concrete form and targets?

"Metaphors are dangerous," the author writes more than once throughout the novel. "Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love." So thinks the novel's "hero" Tomas, the epic womanizer, as he reflects on how he came to love Tereza, who soon becomes his wife. This couple, a marriage built around secrets and each partner's inability to finally communicate the truth about who they are to their spouse, is used for comparison and contrast with Franz, a middle-aged married professor in Switzerland who is in love with one of Tomas' exiled Czech mistresses, the artist Sabine. Their stories are told against the backdrop of the Russian invasion and subjugation of Czechoslovakia during the Cold War.

Kundera weaves their two stories together, examining how love can either lift us up to heights of ecstasy or weigh us down with its solidity and unchangeable reality — and then poses the surprising question: which condition should we view as the negative in binary opposition? Is it the uncentered lack of gravity that makes love real and powerful or does that quality make us too airy and flighty, unserious when we most need it? Or rather, can it be love's grounding quality that allows us to feel the other's existence with stability — or does that weight merely pin us down, smother us with its heaviness? Can it be both? Can it be that when couples part, it is because what is lighter than a breeze for one has become a leaden drag on the other?

This push and pull of ideas, language, and sentiments is beautifully illustrated in the novel's third part, titled "Words Misunderstood," in which Kundera examines how Sabina and Franz's inability to understand the terms the other uses leads to their separation. This is done through a sort of anecdotal dictionary that allows each character to demonstrate their understanding of an idea. The shortest entry bluntly captures some of the magic of this portion:

CEMETERY
Cemeteries in Bohemia are like gardens. The graves are covered with grass and colorful flowers. Modest tombstones are lost in the greenery. When the sun goes down, the cemetery sparkles with tiny candles. It looks as though the dead are dancing at a children's ball. Yes, a children's ball, because the dead are as innocent as children. No matter how brutal life becomes, peace always reigns in the cemetery. Even in wartime, in Hitler's time, in Stalin's time, through all occupations. When she felt low, [Sabina] would get into the car, leave Prague far behind, and walk through one or another of the country cemeteries she loved so well. Against a backdrop of blue hills, they were as beautiful as a lullaby.

For Franz, a cemetery was an ugly dump of stones and bones.

And this too is part of the novel's recurring genius. At every stage, there is an elegiac note to happiness, as if all these dances have been done before, as if all love affairs, even if Nietzsche is wrong, carry within them the seeds of their own endings. Franz and Sabina's inability to even understand each other on very basic levels dooms their romance from the beginning. Their tragedy is commonplace and follows a pattern as if it were ritualized.

Tereza and Tomas' marriage, we see, is held together only by each other's willingness to commit to it and to some third, greater thing than either of themselves, though what that third thing is neither of them understands. For each of them separately, it is a kind of death to be together and a kind of death to be apart, and together their momentary happinesses are a kind of staving off of this specter.

Kundera ends The Unbearable Lightness of Being beautifully, foreshadowing what happens after the closing scenes, which gives the novel a sadly sweet tone instead of just tragic. Instead of simply ending with death, as a kind of negation, the book closes with sleep, part of the circling motif, the cycle we go through, our lives one passing hoop.

After my initial reading of the novel, I found myself rereading it immediately, going through all of it again, underlining passages, and committing certain ones to memory. Over the years, I have returned to this novel again and again, more than many others, much more than Kundera's other novels, despite having read them repeatedly as well. To return to Kundera's world is like reliving your best relationships (and maybe your worst ones too), but reliving them as if you had been smarter, wiser, deeper at the time than you really were. It is a kind of exorcism and a kind of nostalgia, and it is a beautiful example of writing that matters, above all else, writing that matters.

We are facing an unconventional book, and a novel that doesn't conform to the definition. So if you are looking for a neat plot, a resolved conflict, and a conclusive ending in the novel, this novel doesn't belong to that category and will never satisfy you.

There are four characters in the novel, and the reader is the fifth. Kundera takes these four characters and uses them as tools to explain his philosophy of life. He elaborates on each character in detail, strolls along to explain to you what happened from a philosophical and psychological perspective, and then resumes the narration. The fifth character (the reader) can now stop, repeat what he has read, or continue the crazy journey with Kundera.

Lightness and heaviness: Kundera starts from Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence and the inevitability of history repeating itself, and then opposes it and "lightens" it, trying to prove the opposite. The dialectic of lightness and heaviness is an extension of the eternal dialectic and the conflict of contradictions and opposites. Although Kundera leans towards the meaning of heaviness and its weight in human life and the absurdity of lightness in many situations, he distances himself from inevitability and leaves you wondering, making you judge and decide for yourself.

Decisions and "what if": Kundera's characters try to find the perfect place in life where they want to live forever, but is it worth sacrificing everything they will lose? At the moment when they take a step forward, they begin to feel what they have left behind immediately (such as Sabina when she left Tomas, Franz on the Cambodian border as an example), especially when there is no way to know what awaits us on the other side. Do we choose to be happy today at the expense of sorrow tomorrow? Or do we endure and suffer in the present, hoping for good results in the future? What if the carousel ends in chaos and there is definitely no turning back!! Absurdity or wisdom?!.. I don't know, but we "can never know what we want because we live only one life."

Love: Kundera does not approach love from a lyrical perspective, nor does he make it the perfect solution to the problem of life. So when Tereza packed her suitcase and came to him, her "lump" of a heart was the introduction because she was hungry and cold! Also, the love that arose between them was filled with feelings of fear, jealousy, lies, betrayal, lack of trust, and mutual deception. And yet, they clung to it, hoping it would be their salvation. (I think Nizar Qabbani borrowed the poem "The Contradictions" from Milan (and how can betrayal be a solution..))

Socialism and war: Milan presented a general view of the situation after the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, how things changed and the relationship with the occupier, the persecution of intellectuals, their denial, contempt, imprisonment, and the execution of some of them. He also gave a general picture of how life changed and how Czechoslovakia was affected by this situation.

Milan Kundera leaves us with many disturbing existential questions to ponder, perhaps returning to the fact that there are no clear answers to these questions.

The idea wasted in this novel was the quantity of "entanglements" and the attempt at its philosophy and giving it philosophical and intellectual roots!

I will read it a second, third... time

Some beautiful and delicious quotes:

- Page 11 "In the beginning of many myths, there is someone who saves a child from a wolf"

- Page 20 "To love someone out of pity means that we don't really love him" reminded me of "Beware of pity" by Stefan Zweig

- Page 30 "The self is no lighter than the pain we endure with others and for others and in the place of others, which the imagination multiplies and returns with a hundred voices"

- Page 43 "For love to be unforgettable, the shell of the moment must meet"

- Page 64 "We are all weak in the face of a power greater than us"

- Page 67 "To be afflicted with a role means that a person is drunk with his own weakness.. He feels his weakness but does not want to confront it but rather wallow in it" A better word than "role" could have been used, "predicament" would have been better.

- Page 77 "Not all women are worthy of being called women"

- Page 82 "The strict borders draw the line beyond which life disappears" This is a contradiction to Nietzsche and Gibran

- Page 82 "He who gropes for infinity has nothing but to close his eyes"

- Page 108 "What remains when there are no longer any loved ones to deceive, a spouse, love, or a homeland"

- Page 109 "And instead of the inhabitants of the cemeteries being more intelligent after their death, they are more stupid than they were when they were alive"

- Page 120 "A question without an answer is a barrier with no paths beyond it" "The questions that remain unanswered are those that point to the limits of human possibilities, and they are the ones that draw the boundaries of our existence"

- Page 163 "To avoid punishment, we usually resort to the future"

- Page 168 "Love relationships are like empires; once the principle on which they are based disappears, they disappear with it"

- Page 172 "Criminal systems are not created by criminal people but by passionate and convinced people who believe they have found the only way to heaven"

- Page 225 "History is as light as human life is light, light to an unbearable degree, light like a breeze, like dust, like something that will disappear tomorrow"

- Page 230 "In all circumstances, I will see nothing. There are two voids where the eyes are"

- Page 277 "The final burial of the husband is the true wedding of the wife, and it is her marriage to her life and a recompense that atones for all her sufferings"

- Page 286 "It is written in the Book of Genesis that God created man and made him rule over the birds, the fish, and the livestock. And of course, the author of the Book of Genesis was a man, not a horse. And it is not certain that God really wanted man to rule over all other creatures"

- Page 288 "Let's imagine a man who has been entrusted by one of the Martians with a cart and then has his heart changed by one of the Martians on a seashore to make him like them. Perhaps he will then surely remember the side of the ox that he was used to cutting in his plays, and he will offer his apology (if it is very late) to the cow"

I think all the words that Kundera wanted to put in his book, Hazrat Hafez has said in one couplet: "The passionate ones are such that they deserve exile!" There are times when the narration is a painful account of the isolation and loneliness of significant human beings and the desperate efforts of the human species to escape from loneliness. The philosophical style of the novel brings a profound reading experience to the reader. And then the world that Kundera portrays is a mixture of love, betrayal, loneliness, fear, and hope. The emotional conflict and internal struggle that the characters in the story are involved in, along with Kundera's manifestation of his disillusionment with communism, is the main essence of the writing of the work. The noteworthy point is the naming of the dog Trayza as Tolstoy. A young dog that is on the verge of death and is rescued by Tomas. Reading this book was a good, difficult, tiring, and enjoyable experience.

It makes the reader deeply reflect on various aspects of human nature and society. The complex characters and their relationships add depth and richness to the story. Kundera's unique writing style and his exploration of profound themes make this book a masterpiece that leaves a lasting impression on the reader's mind.

I have known about this novel for a long time and have had it on my "to-read" list for a while. Now that Nha Nam has republished the translation of this book, translated by Trinh Y Thư, I immediately bought it to read. Right on the first page, I saw the name Nietzsche appear, and I thought to myself that the book must be very difficult to read. And indeed, in many places, in many paragraphs, Milan Kundera challenges the mind of a 25-year-old girl in real life (and perhaps for this reason, the book is not really convincing enough for me to give it 5 stars ^^). However, overall, with the story of the four main characters: Tomas, Tereza, Sabina, and Franz, the author has presented many things, has opened up many aspects of life, of human nature, of love, of the complex relationship between two living beings, a man and a woman, of the misunderstandings, of the guiding principles that we often easily follow, thinking they are noble and beautiful ideals.

Why does Milan Kundera say that life is light and profound? For him, life is a series of days and months that always move forward, an event that happens only once, cannot be turned back, cannot be started again from the beginning, there is no chance for us to correct mistakes, or do things differently, or try again many times. And what happens only once is best not to happen. The lightness of human life begins from that. Life is as light as a feather, because it does not have the magnitude of a great experiment, where countless changes can be made to produce different results. At the end of the journey of life, dust returns to dust. But it is precisely this lightness of human life that, in my perception after reading this novel, makes life profound.

Life is light and profound because before every decision we make in life, we are hard-pressed to know whether it is the right or wrong choice; and after each decision, we always ask ourselves, if we had done things differently, what would have happened. The question "What if?" is always the most haunting question of all time. And even if a certain decision, at the time we make it, we consider it as light as a feather, a decision driven by instinct and thinking that nothing is important, but in fact, the burden it leaves behind is extremely heavy.

Among the four main characters in the story, I recognize myself the most in the character of Tereza - the woman who loves books and sees the books that she uses to surround her life as a kind of noble and pure realm against the memories and impurities of life. Tereza sees in Tomas - her husband - a lifebuoy that helps her escape from the fears and identities of the human world - something that has haunted her since the terrifying experiences when living with her mother - to reach "a different height". And perhaps if I love a man, I will also dedicate all my loyalty to the man I love and the relationship I build with him, just as Tereza turns her loyalty to Tomas into the only pillar supporting the relationship with her husband, who is always secretive with many mistresses and whose hair always smells of other women.

However, the love that Tomas has for Tereza is not balanced and is somewhat unfair compared to the great love that Tereza has for Tomas; even their inner nature is the same. Tomas is strong, while Tereza is weak. And it is precisely this weakness that binds Tereza and her loyalty into a love affair with a heavy debt that will never end until the day of death. What if Tereza were braver and dared to leave Tomas? What if she were not so sensitive, if she could live like Tomas, could separate love from lust, could love Tomas and sleep with many other men at the same time, just as Tomas loves her and can sleep with many other women at the same time? What would happen then?

And Sabina, Tomas' artist mistress, who lives with the truth of always betraying herself, her life seems light but turns out to be also heavy and profound. She follows the call of her own heart, leaves Franz - perhaps the only man in the world who truly loves her - to go to what? A wandering life, without a family, without parents, without children, without love in the US - a country that makes her feel as if she is about to be buried under tons of heavy soil. And throughout her life journey, she seems to never be able to forget Franz, just as Franz can never forget her. If they had been more patient before, stayed together for more than just 9 months of a secret relationship, and found a common language for the "dictionary of misinterpreted phrases" of the two of them, would things have been different? Did Sabina really have to leave Franz on the day he publicly announced their relationship to his wife?

Perhaps, in the end, it seems that only Tomas - the polygamous surgeon - has achieved a certain degree of true lightness of human life, when he can easily break off from the medical profession, not burdened with a mission to cure anyone...

The story of these four people is portrayed against the backdrop of the political picture of the Czech Republic in the (presumably) 1960s of the 20th century, with the event of the Prague Spring, the Bohemian region (famous for its beer-making industry, surely you have all heard of "Bohemian Beer" ^^) being invaded by the Russian Empire. I don't know much about the history of the Czech Republic and dare not comment too much (I hope those who know can teach me ^^), but through this work, I can also vaguely imagine the greedy and cruel nature of the Russian imperialist/USSR bloc, along with the puppet regime they established to suppress the Czech people who love their country but do not have enough power to struggle for their nation. That was a time when intellectuals like Tomas, from the position of a surgeon, became a janitor; it was a time when the Czech people, through the means of wiretapping and demeaning filming by the Russians, could easily be framed for opposing the regime or become informants to point out their own compatriots. The political game serves as the background for the love game between an old Tomas who likes to explore the unique characteristics of each woman through lust, and a loyal but gentle and naive Tereza...

With beautiful and strange sentences that accurately address many issues, Milan Kundera not only weaves the story of the relationship of the four main characters, against the backdrop of an exploration of the nature of human life, but he also presents very interesting views on the beauty of life and the nature of human beings in love. The beauty of life comes from the pattern of a series of coincidences that appear very often in the text and that we think are difficult to happen. But it happens, and it is the pattern of six coincidences that have pushed Tereza into Tomas' arms, six coincidences that have given birth to love, making Tereza appear in Tomas' life like a baby wrapped in a wicker basket and placed at the foot of Tomas' bed. I especially like the idea that love begins from the metaphors that Milan Kundera has used to describe the relationship between Tomas and Tereza.

And the nature of human beings in love, Milan Kundera has presented it very reasonably, especially when it is placed in the context of human love for dogs, and more broadly for animals in general. It explains why many people nowadays would rather dedicate all their love and affection to pets than enter into an emotional relationship with their own kind. Human beings - beings who have been expelled from heaven - perhaps always have the inherent nature of being self-interested. No matter how hard we try to live selflessly, we cannot deny that part of our own baseness (those who dedicate their entire lives to thinking about and caring for others have become saints and are no longer human). And because of self-interest, we very rarely accept to love unconditionally (except for the love of a mother for her child).

When we love, we often always demand to receive something similar in return, to love each other more; we always have a tendency to want to change the other person. But in the relationship with animals, both we and the animals do not expect to receive anything in return. We love the dog with a voluntary love, just as Tereza loves her dog Karenin. The dog, because it is a dog, does not want to change us, and also because it is a dog, we do not want to change it. Therefore, the relationship between people is much more complex; and human life - different from that of a dog which only has chewing and spitting out a piece of bread - always moves forward and never goes in circles. Precisely because of this, Milan Kundera has presented a common truth: human beings can never truly be happy, because true happiness comes from the desire for repetition.

Mr. Kundera is absolutely right, because we human beings always have to grow up, have to move forward, and with each passing year and month, we demand and desire that what happens in our lives also has to move forward: to be promoted, to get a raise, to have a better job, a bigger house, a more beautiful lover/spouse, a more complete and prosperous family... These are obvious desires, but at the same time, they are also the graveyard of happiness, because if we keep moving forward, when will we stop? And this progress also requires us to put in a lot of effort and go through a lot of hardships. While for repetition, we can predict what will happen; just like a dog has only so many repetitive activities every day, we will truly be at ease waiting for and enjoying each day. Therefore, many times, I also only have a small dream, which is to wake up every morning to read a book, cook delicious dishes, sit and look at the plants and flowers, take care of the house, not have to drive in the hot sun and dusty traffic to go to the office, work hard like moths to the flame, and only come home when it gets dark. But I also have to admit that it is true that if there is no progress, no effort and hardship, then the world and human beings would not have developed as they are now. Perhaps development is always inversely proportional to happiness, isn't it?