The Art of the Novel

milan kundera linda asher

Kundera brilliantly examines the work of such important and diverse figures as Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne, Diderot, Flaubert, Tolstoy, and Musil. He is especially penetrating on Hermann Broch, and his exploration of the world of Kafka's novels vividly reveals the comic terror of Kafka's bureaucratized universe.

Kundera's discussion of his own work includes his views on the role of historical events in fiction, the meaning of action, and the creation of character in the post-psychological novel.

Genres nonfictionwritingessaysliterary criticismliteraturebooks about booksczech literaturecriticismphilosophycrafts

170 pages, Paperback

First published November 21,1986

Literary awards

muhammad hasan askari award,

This edition

Format: 170 pages, Paperback
Published: April 1, 2003 by Harper Perennial Modern Classics
ISBN: 9780060093747
ASIN: 0060093749
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 His Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked in 1979, but he was granted Czech citizenship in 2019.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.