The author initially intended to call this novel The Lyrical Age. The lyrical age, according to Kundera, is youth, and this novel, above all, is an epic of adolescence; an ironic epic that tenderly erodes sacrosanct values: childhood, motherhood, revolution, and even poetry. Jaromil is in fact a poet. His mother made him a poet and accompanies him (figuratively) to his love bed and (literally) to his deathbed. A ridiculous and touching character, horrifying and totally innocent ("innocence with its bloody smile"!), Jaromil is at the same time a true poet. He's no creep, he's Rimbaud. Rimbaud entrapped by the communist revolution, entrapped in a somber farce.

Two tales of seduction, separated by more than two hundred years, interweave and oscillate between the sublime and the comic in this, Milan Kundera's lightest novel. In the 18th century, the marvelous Madame de T. summons a young nobleman to her chamber and gives him an unforgettable lesson in the art of seduction and the pleasures of love. In the same chat at the end of the 20th century, a hapless intellectual experiences a rather less successful night. Distracted by his desire to be the center of attention at a convention of entomologists, Vincent misses the opportunity to be with a beautiful stranger and suffers the ridicule of his peers. A "morning-after" encounter between the two men brings the novel to a poignant close and provides a unique insight into the different mind-sets of the two centuries. As Vincent prepares to speed off on his motorcycle, he has already obliterated the memory of his humiliation. The young nobleman, on the other hand, relives the delicious pleasures of the night as he lies back on the cushions of his carriage. Ruminating on how the pleasures of slowness have disappeared in today's fast-paced, future-shocked world, Kundera explores the secret bond between slowness and memory and the connection between our era's desire to forget and the way we have given ourselves over to the demon of speed. As provocative as it is entertaining, "Slowness" is Kundera in top form.

◎共計有七篇短篇故事。七篇故事各自獨立，卻又巧妙相連；由極單純的人物、故事背景組成，串聯出七個荒謬、可笑、自作自受的以『愛』為主軸的人生景色。 『我知道你一向是個直爽的人，你自己對這一點很驕傲。可是，請你想想這個問題：『為什麼』要說實話？是什麼強迫我們這麼做？為什麼必須把誠實看做是一種美德？假設你遇到一個瘋子，他說他自己是魚，我們每一個人也都是魚。你會和他爭論嗎？你會在他面前脫掉衣服，好讓他看看你沒有魚鱗嗎？你會當他的面對他說你心裡真正想的嗎？你說嘛！』 他的哥哥沈默以對，艾德華繼續說：『要是你對他說實話，把你對他真正的想法告訴，他這意思就是說，你同意和一個瘋子進行嚴肅的對話，你同意你自己也是個瘋子。我們所處的這個世界正是這個樣子。如果你執意要當一個人的面說實話，這就表示你嚴肅的看待他。嚴肅的看待一件根本不嚴肅的事，意味著自己也要喪失自己的嚴肅我啊，我為了不要嚴肅看待瘋子，不要自己也變成瘋子，就『必須』說謊。』

Kundera whirls through comedy and tragedy towards his central question: how does a person, any person, live today? In constructing his answer, he writes of politics, sex, literature, modern man's alienation - and of their antidotes: laughter and forgetting

From amazon.com Abe Ravitz, Cleveland Plain Dealer "An intellectual heavyweight and a pure literary virtuoso, Milan Kundera takes some of Freud's most cherished complexes and irreverently whirls them about in acts of legerdemain that capture our darkest, deepest human passionsThe tales in Laughable Loves surprise and illuminateKundera's world is complex, full of mockeries and paradoxes. Life is often brutal and humiliating; it is often blasphemous, funny, irritating."

Rich in its stories, characters, and imaginative range, "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" is the novel that brought Milan Kundera his first big international success in the late 1970s. Like all his work, it is valuable for far more than its historical implications. In seven wonderfully integrated parts, different aspects of human existence are magnified and reduced, reordered and emphasized, newly examined, analyzed, and experienced.

Every novelist's work contains an implicit vision of the history of the novel, an idea of what the novel is. I have tried to express here the idea of the novel that is inherent in my own novels. -- Milan Kundera 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.

和我的思考以及回憶相遇， 和我的舊主題還有我的舊愛相遇…… 暌違四年，米蘭‧昆德拉最新力作！ 與大師一起談文學、談藝術、談音樂！ 如果有人問我，我的母國透過什麼在我的美學基因裡留下深遠影響，我會毫不遲疑地回答：透過楊納切克的音樂。 我知道想像力的價值，因此對於費里尼的電影，我始終懷抱謙遜的崇敬之意。 重讀《百年孤寂》的時候，一個奇怪的念頭出現在我的腦海裡：這些偉大的小說裡的主人翁都沒有小孩。我的感覺是，這部小說帶給小說藝術神化的殊榮，同時也是向小說年代的一次告別。

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), written by Milan Kundera, is a philosophical novel about two men, two women, a dog and their lives in the Prague Spring of the Czechoslovak Communist period in 1968. Although written in 1982, the novel was not published until two years later, in France.

《生活在别处》是一个年轻艺术家的肖像画。昆德拉以其独到的笔触塑造出雅罗米尔这样一个形象，描绘了这个年轻诗人充满激情而又短暂的一生，具有“发展小说”的许多特点。在这部作品中，作者对诗人创作过程的分析是微妙而精细的。创作过程当然不仅指下笔写作的过程，而且更广义地指一个诗人的全部成长过程。作者所要表现和所要探究的是，人的心灵所具有的激情，它的产生和它的结果。因而这本书又是一本现代心理小说，表现了一个诗人的艺术感觉的成长。

A novel of irreconcilable loves and infidelities, which embraces all aspects of human existence, and addresses the nature of twentieth-century 'Being'. From the author of TESTAMENTS BETRAYED.

《不能承受的生命之轻》是米兰·昆德拉最负盛名的作品。小说描写了托马斯与特丽莎、萨丽娜之间的感情生活。但它不是一个男人和两个女人的三角性爱故事，它是一部哲理小说，小说从“永恒轮回”的讨论开始，把读者带入了对一系列问题的思考中，比如轻与重、灵与肉。 《不能承受的生命之轻》是一部意象繁复的书，其中装载了多种涵义：被政治化了的社会内涵的揭示、人性考察、个人命运在特定历史与政治语境下的呈现，以及对两性关系本质上的探索等。昆德拉将这些元素糅合在一起，写成一部非同凡响的小说——其中既有隐喻式的哲学思考，也有人的悲欢离合的生命历程的展现。

《告别圆舞曲》由捷克小说家米兰·昆德拉编著。 欧洲伟大的小说就是一种消遣，所有真正的小说家都很怀念这一点！然而消遣并不排除它的重力。在《告别圆舞曲》中，我在思考这样一个问题：人配在地球上生存吗？难道不应当“把地球从人类的魔爪下解放出来”吗？将格外重的问题和格外轻的形式结合在一起，这是我一直以来的野心。这不是和种单纯的艺术野心。形式之轻和主题之重的结合揭示了我们人间这种种戏剧（在我们床上所发生的一切和在历史舞台上我们所演出的都是一样）毫无意义，到了可怕的地步。

《玩笑》的背景是捷克六十年代政治风云到来的前夕，但《玩笑》中的故事情节本身却追溯到五十年代；小说主要是围绕主人公卢德维克的复仇而展开：青年知识分子路德维克，因为与女友开了个玩笑，被朋友泽马内克陷害，送入苦役营。归来后他为了报复泽马内克，设计勾引其妻海伦娜。计划成功后，他才发现：泽马内克早就想抛弃妻子，他的报复成了一个毫无作用的“玩笑”……

在线阅读本书 Book Description A young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing; one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover -- these are the two couples whose story is told in this masterful novel. In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence, we feel "the unbearable lightness of being" not only as the consequence of our pristine actions but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine. From AudioFile Jonathan Oliver employs a husky-voiced tone that proves the right match for this darkish story, one that requires of listeners a dollop of patience. Set first in Czechoslovakia, then in Switzerland, Kundera's story tells the sometimes laborious story of a womanizing Czech surgeon forced to flee the Russian invasion and take on menial roles, giving his passion for the flesh a slighly different perspective, as he is no longer a doctor but just a window-washer. His relationship with this current female-of-choice, the interesting and puzzling Tereza, is at the center of the novel. Oliver is good, very good, pausing with great effect, having just the right amount of low-key drama and contemplative musing Book Dimension length: (cm)19.7 　　　 　　　　　 　　　　　 width:(cm)12.8