My review of Czech author Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera was born in 1929 in Czechoslovakia. He is of Czech origin but moved to France later in life. His books were banned in communist Czechoslovakia before the velvet revolution in 1989.
In his book The Book of Laughter and Forgetting we see a fragmented novel, but more of a set of short stories. We do experience his past in Lost Letters and Mother. They talk about his upbringing and the state of communist Czechoslovakia. The term disappearance is used more than once. In the Angels we see a couple of teenagers recounting and discussing the novel Rhinoceros and Other Plays by Eugene Ionesco. Though they analyze it, they figure out that it is nonsensical. In the second part of Lost Letters we see an enamored man and his mistress. They have to keep this a secret from their mother. In Litost we see the rise of a relationship between a young educated man and a housewife. Litost has a special meaning in Czech, it means

a feeling as infinite as an open accordion, a feeling that is the synthesis of many others: grief,sympathy,remorse, and an indefinable longing.

In The Angels we see a young woman kidnapped to an island of children. There she learns to live with the children, however problems occur. It is a rather desolate and isolated encounter. In the last story we see the end of a unique character in the book and the ritual orgy that ensues.

This book is quite varied in its approach and does not tie in all the stories together, but rather explores different aspects of life. Like any communist era writer, Kundera talks about the revolution, but more than just that. There are human relationships and engrossing tales of sexuality.

The novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, also has tales of sexual encounters. The protagonist is a womanizer, who only truly loves his wife. In the end he figures out that it is only she that he wants. This novel, his most famous, is also a movie. It stars Daniel Day Lewis and Binoche. It has deep roots in existentialism. It is a novel about the purpose of living and explores the difference between love and sex. The setting for the novel is also a year before the occupation by the Russians. It takes place within one year. The protagonist and his wife eventually move to the country where they find peace and each other.