And, I believe, this is his project: to examine “the irreconcilable duality of body and soul, that fundamental human experience” (40) while inching ever closer to “the sweet lightness of being” (30). I found myself inspired by Kundera’s narrative interruptions, only to be utterly disgusted shortly thereafter by his characters’ base thoughts and actions. This novel includes soaringly beautiful prose that grasp at the philosophical truths at the heart of humanity it also wades through the everyday reality of sexuality, desire and the physical human body. Kundera’s novel deconstructs the fundamental dialectics of human existence: love and sex, loyalty and betrayal, authentic art and kitsch, and of course, the titular lightness and weight. Set in Czechoslovakia around the 1968 Prague Spring (with later moments set in Switzerland and even the US), it is the story of what Kundera calls “The Grand March” as much as it is the intimate story of a marriage based in love but punctuated by infidelity. It is the story of two women, two men, and a dog, as well as several other marginal characters, including a pet pig. Milan Kundera’s novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) is at once beautiful and base, philosophical and depraved, epiphanic and mundane in a word, it is quintessentially postmodern.
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