The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts

milan kundera linda asher

"Un rideau magique, tissé de légendes, était suspendu devant le monde. Cervantes envoya don Quichotte en voyage et déchira le rideau. Le monde s'ouvrit devant le chevalier errant dans toute la nudité comique de sa prose...... c'est en déchirant le rideau de la préinterprétation que Cervantes a mis en route cet art nouveau ; son geste destructeur se reflète et se prolonge dans chaque roman digne de ce nom ; c'est le signe d'identité de l'art du roman."

Genres nonfictionessaysliterary criticismliteraturewritingcriticismczech literaturefrancephilosophy21st century

176 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1,2005

Literary awards

french-american foundation translation prize,

This edition

Format: 176 pages, Hardcover
Published: January 30, 2007 by Harper
ISBN: 9780060841867
ASIN: 0060841869
Language: English

About the author

milan kundera

Milan Kundera (1 April 1929 – 11 July 2023) was a Czech and French novelist. He went into exile in France in 1975, acquiring citizenship in 1981. His Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked in 1979, but he was granted Czech citizenship in 2019.

Kundera wrote in Czech and French. He revises the French translations of all his books; people therefore consider these original works as not translations. He is best known for his novels, including The Joke (1967), The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1979), and The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), all of which exhibit his extreme though often comical skepticism.