The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

An absolutely dazzling entertainment. . . . Arousing on every level—political erotic intellectual and above all humorous. —NewsweekThe Book of Laughter and Forgetting calls itself a novel although it is part fairy tale part literary criticism part political tract part musicology and part autobiography. It can call itself whatever it wants to because the whole is genius. —New York TimesRich 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.