The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
1979
First Published
3.96
Average Rating
288
Number of Pages
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 1970's. Like all his work, it is valuable for far more than just 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.
Avg Rating
3.96
Number of Ratings
52,053
5 STARS
31%
4 STARS
41%
3 STARS
21%
2 STARS
5%
1 STARS
1%
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Author
Milan Kundera
Author · 23 books
People best know Czech-born writer Milan Kundera 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. Since 1975, he lived in exile in France and in 1981 as a naturalized citizen. Kundera wrote in Czech and French. He revises the French translations of all his books; people therefore consider these original works as not translations. The Communist government of Czechoslovakia censored and duly banned his books from his native country, the case until the downfall of this government in the velvet revolution of 1989.
