Overview

Milan Kundera's sixth novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman to her swimming instructor, a gesture that creates a character in the mind of a writer named Kundera. Like Flaubert's Emma or Tolstoy's Anna, Kundera's AgnÈs becomes an object of fascination, of indefinable longing. From that character springs a novel, a gesture of the imagination that both embodies and articulates Milan Kundera's supreme mastery of the novel and its purpose: to explore thoroughly the great themes of existence.

From Publishers Weekly

Kundera (whose novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being has sold more than 600,000 copies in paperback) offers brilliant meditations on 20th-century life as he contrasts a comic love triangle involving Goethe with a modern-day trio of fictional Parisians. This BOMC selection spent 12 weeks on PW 's hardcover bestseller list. $100,000 ad/promo.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Brilliantly mordant...beautifully translated...strong and mesmerizing."

-- -- New York Times

"Brilliantly mordant...beautifully translated...strong and mesmerizing."

-- New York Times

"Ingenious witty provocative and formidably intelligent, both a pleasure and a challenge to the reader." -- Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World

"Inspired Kundera's most brilliantly imagined novel...A book that entrances, beguiles and charms us from first page to last." -- Susan Miron, * Cleveland Plain Dealer*

"Inspired Kundera's most brilliantly imagined novel...A book that entrances, beguiles and charms us from first page to last." -- Susan Miron, Cleveland Plain Dealer