The Joke

<b>The first novel by author of modern classic <i>The Unbearable Lightness of Being </i>of which Salman Rushdie wrote: 'It is impossible to do justice here to the subtleties comedy and wisdom of this very beautiful novel.'</b><br><br>All too often this brilliant novel of thwarted love and revenge miscarried has been read for its political implications. Now more than a quarter century after The Joke was first published and several years after the collapse of the Soviet-imposed Czechoslovak regime it becomes easier to put such implications into perspective in favor of valuing the book (and all Milan Kundera 's work) as what it truly is: great stirring literature that sheds new light on the eternal themes of human existence.