Znamenitá a úspěšná dramatizace Diderotova Jakuba Fatalisty, hravá i krutá studie proměn lidského osudu v neprohlédnutelném světě, je jediný autorův dramatický text patřící k dílům, která „má bez výhrad rád a chce vydávat“.
A model of clarity, grace, and intelligence, François Ricard's book joins the great French tradition of the literary essay as a meditation on the writing of Milan Kundera. Agnès's Final Afternoon imitates the protagonist of Kundera's novel Immortality on the last afternoon of her life. Like all readers of fiction, Agnès steps out of her car -- out of the world of planned routes, responsibilities, and social self -- and gives herself up to the discovery of a new landscape, an experience that will transform her. François Ricard's essay enters into the writings of Milan Kundera in much the same way. The landscape he explores includes a chain of ten novels, composed between 1959 and 1999, and two books containing one of the most lucid reflections on the novel. From The Joke to Ignorance, Ricard uncovers the richness of theme and character in the novels, their structural composition, polyphony of voices, and innovations of form and subject matter that stretch the boundaries of the novel to a breaking point. Readers need not be familiar with all of Milan Kundera's oeuvre to appreciate this unusual and original book. Agnès's Final Afternoon will inspire a sense of wonder and lead you to appreciate the beauty and profundity of Kundera's art.
This highly original book imitates the protagonist, Agnès, of Kundera's novel Immortality. Like all readers of fiction, when Agnès steps out of the car, she steps out of the world of planned routes, responsibilities, and social self, and gives herself up to the discovery of a new landscape, an experience that will transform her. François Ricard's beautiful essay enters into the writings of Milan Kundera in much the same way. The landscape he explores in Agnès's Final Afternoon includes a chain of ten novels, composed between 1959 and 1999; he takes us through the themes and characters of the novels, their structural composition, and innovations of form and content that stretch the boundaries of the novel to breaking point.François Ricard is a Professor of French Literature at McGill University. He has been writing about the work of Milan Kundera for fifteen years.
A novel, divided into seven parts and exploring immortality. This is the author's seventh novel. His previous works include The Joke, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. He has written one play, Jacques and his Master.
A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon, a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals—while her other lover, earnest, faithful, and good, stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and fortuitous events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence we feel “the unbearable lightness of being.” A major achievement from one of the world’s truly great writers, Milan Kundera’s magnificent novel of passion and politics, infidelity and ideas, encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy, illuminating all aspects of human existence.
Laughable loves is a collection of stories that first appeared in print in Prague before 1968, but then was banned. The seven stories are all concerned with love, or rather with the complex erotic games and strategems employed by women and especially men as they try to come to terms with needs ad impulses that can start a terrifying train of events. Sexual attraction is shown as a game that often turns sour, an experience that brings with it painful insisghts and releases uncertainty, panic, vanity and a constant need for reassurance.
Melancholik Milan Kundera sa v nesentimentálnom ľúbostnom románe Nevedomosť aspoň v myšlienkach a pocitoch vracia do Československa, ktoré voľakedy musel opustiť. Irena po ruskej okupácii v roku 1968 emigrovala do Francúzska. Josef sa rozhodol o rok neskôr pre ten istý krok, no vybral si Dánsko. Po dvadsiatich rokoch sa náhodne stretnú na letisku v Paríži, obidvaja letia do Prahy na krátku návštevu. Aké bude ich stretnutie? Čo ich čaká v niekdajšej domovine? Cesta vedie do minulosti, k starým priateľom, rodine, na miesta, ktoré mali kedysi radi, no už ich takmer nespoznávajú. Vedeli by sa tu ešte cítiť ako doma? A kde je ich skutočný domov? Román, ktorý vychádza v preklade Eleny Flaškovej, hovorí o tom, že najdôležitejšie rozhodnutia prijímame vo veku neskúsenosti a nevedomosti. Témou je nepochopenie, nespoľahlivosť pamäti, zradnosť spomienok, nemožnosť návratu tých, ktorí strávili polovicu dospelého života v inej krajine a kultúre. Kunderove pozorovania sú presné a neľútostné. Majstrovsky spriada nitky eseje a románu.
Readers are taken through a midsummer's night in which two tales of seduction, separated by more than 200 years, interweave and oscillate between the sublime and the ridiculous. They provide merely a narrative framework for Kundera's novel, within which is condensed existential analysis.
Das beeindruckende Porträt eines modernen Klassikers: Der 1929 in Brünn geborene und heute in Paris lebende Milan Kundera ist mit Romanen wie „Der Scherz“ und „Die unerträgliche Leichtigkeit des Seins“ in alle Weltsprachen übersetzt worden und zählt zu den bedeutendsten Romanciers der Gegenwart. Der kanadische Literaturwissenschaftler und Essayist Francois Ricard stellt Kunderas gesamtes Schaffen dar, von seinen Anfängen in der Tschechoslowakei bis zu den großen Werken, die er als Exilant in Frankreich verfasste. Ricard untersucht Kunderas Stellung im modernen Roman und folgt ihm von seinen politischen Motiven bis zu seiner Erforschung von Liebe und Unsterblichkeit.
