review

The unbearable lightness of being is a truly brilliant book, written by Milan Kundera, illustrating many different themes and story lines all at once, following stories of love, political intrigue, betrayal and philosophical thoughts. Based around the time of the Prague spring and its aftermath, the unbearable lightness of being focuses on the lives of four people, Tomas, Tereza, Franz and Sabina, their lives linked by both people, ideas, and their take on the world. The book itself, although confusing in places, manages to create an eerie sense of disembodiment from the story and the characters, you find it easier to remember disjoined images and ideas, rather than the names of the characters and the order of events.

The events of the novel take place during and after the Russian occupation of Czechoslovakia, and follows the lives of the four main characters, and their experiences through this. However, the actual reason for the novels existence doesn’t seem to be to tell a story, but rather to demonstrate the philosophical ideas that Kundera wishes to put across. Because of this, many times you feel yourself dragged away from the lives of Tomas, Tereza and the rest, into the ramblings of Kundera, and his take on philosophers such as Paremenides and Nietzsche. Kunderas interaction with the reader is quite interesting, bringing in a personal touch to the book, and making it seem more like a conversation at points than a normal story. Kundera even acknowledges that the characters in his stories aren’t real, but more devices to help him show the reader how lightness and weight affect peoples lives, and how hard it is to truly decide which is better. As well as this perplexing issue, Kundera also raises questions on love, lust, sex and religion, along with other themes that are relevant to many readers, wherever they are.

The novel opens with a puzzling page or so, starting with “The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify? Putting it negatively, the myth of eternal return states that a life which disappears once and for all, which does not return, is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing” This is a good warning for what is yet to come in the book, jumping in and out of reality and fantasy or ramblings, although which is which you can never be certain. Another good example, that brings out the flavour of the book, is where Tereza decides to go visit Sabina, Tomas’ mistress, at the place she works. “ The camera served Tereza as both a mechanical eye through which to observe Tomas’ mistress and a veil by which to conceal her face from her. It took Sabina some time before she could bring herself to slip out of the robe entirely. The situations she found herself in was proving a bit more difficult that she had expected. After several minutes of posing, she went up to Tereza and said “now its my turn to take your picture. Strip!” Sabina had heard the command ”Strip!” so many times from Tomas that it was engraved in her memory. Thus Tomas’ mistress had just given Tomas’ command to Tomas’ wife. The two women were joined by some magic word. That was Tomas’ way of unexpectedly turning and innocent conversation with a woman into an erotic situation.”

Not a light book itself, the unbearable lightness of being is more of a book that needs a serious commitment to be read, as it is hard to follow at some points, but, overall, is a brilliant book, that really makes you think about how you live your life, and whether or not you are light, heavy, or a combination of the two. A tale of opposites, extremes, and a great read once you get into it.