The Record of Laughter and Forgetting: a Series of Works by Milan Kundera (2022 Edition)
About This Novel
Kundera's must-read masterpiece, Kundera's masterpiece of regaining his novel ambitions, a new era of novel art, and the winner of the Lu Xun Literary Award for Literary Translation. "The Record of Laughter and Forgetting" is Milan Kundera's masterpiece novel. It is Kundera's first novel after leaving the Czech Republic and settling in France. "This is a novel about Tamina, and when Tamina is not present, it is a novel for Tamina. She is the main character and the main audience, and all other stories are variations on her own story, and they coalesce into her life as if they were present. It's the same in a mirror." Tamina is from Prague and works as a waiter in a small cafe in a city in western Europe. After her husband's death, she lives alone, quiet and peaceful, but she mobilizes her friends and devotes herself to others, trying every means to get back the eleven notepads and letters she left at her mother-in-law's house in Prague. Husband, mother, homeland... The past has become Tamina's salvation. "If the rickety building of memories collapses like an unstable tent, Tamina will only be left with the present, this invisible point, this nothingness that slowly marches towards death." Tamina wants to get back eleven notepads, Mirek wants to return the love letter from twenty-five years ago... Starting from his own situation, Kundera writes about those who try to resist forgetting and stubbornly retain memories. The content that people hope to preserve or forget is the corresponding eternal theme, just like laughter with joy and irony. "This is a novel about laughter and forgetting."
What Readers Think
Rating
Community(0)
Rating
Community(0)
