The Unbearable Lightness of Being

I read this novel because the great writer Milan Kundera died this summer. He was my favorite writer when I was a young woman. The Unbearable Lightness of Being was his last novel, written in Czech while living in France.

The voice in this novel is so strong (and light at the same time), and the novel is so rich and so full of ideas! It's almost impossible to summarize it. I remembered the love story between Tomas and Tereza, the truck accident that caused their death, and Tomas telling women: "Take off your clothes." Today, he would be in… show more.

This was one of the first books I ever loved as a teenager and it has always stayed with me.

A professor recommended it to me, and I didn’t know that it would heavily reference Beethoven’s last string quartet, which I was working on at the time.

I love the way Kundera can weave so many disparate things together, including Beethoven’s fate motif and the fate of the character’s relationships. It’s something I find very inspiring and try to do in my own works.

Most people would probably not think of The Unbearable Lightness of Being as being a coming-of-age novel. Coming-of-age novels often center around younger characters dealing with first crushes, forming an identity, finding a self, separate from family—The Unbearable Lightness of Being is none of that. Instead, I think of it as about a second “coming of age.” This “coming of age” deals with recreating an identity after you do not recognize what your life has become. I find it’s one of those books with something for everyone, though I find myself recommending it the most to college students or… show more.

Another book that influenced me as an erotic writer, Kundera sets the parodies of sexual desire, infidelity, and lust against the turbulent 1960s. It taught me how you can integrate sexual desire into a bigger narrative, encapsulating the tragedy of the fickle appetites of the male player. The other brilliant aspect of this book is the organic way it has the shifting political background of Europe mid 20th century. It inspired me to look at the psychology of where you place your stories and how this can re-enforce the underlying theme of the narrative. In Kundera’s case – the… show more.

An acutely perceptive analysis of the fundamental choice facing all humans: lightness or weight. Weight is an attachment of various sorts – of love, affection, obligation, commitment, and so on. Lightness is the absence of these. Are we humans defined by our attachments? Or is there a core of us that exists unencumbered or attachment-free – a core self that chooses its attachments to others rather than being defined by them? Both options have their drawbacks.

In the background, there is also a striking case for animal rights, grounded in the virtue of mercy.

This is another philosophical novel and Kundera, more than any other novelist, inspired me to become a writer. It’s a novel of ideas couched in a great story, a love story, yes, but much more. Oh, and read the book before you watch the movie. While I like the movie, too, it’s not nearly as good as the book.

One of the indisputably great novels of the twentieth century. Written with a deft and playful touch, The Unbearable Lightness of Being explores the lives of Tomáš, a promiscuous surgeon, his wife Tereza, his lover the anarchic artist Sabina, and her lover, the university lecturer Franz. Oh, and the dog Karenin. Set in the turbulent world of Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring and the Russian invasion of August 1968 it deals with profound themes of existence and freedom in a tantalizing and provocative manner that fascinated readers when it first came out in 1984. You may watch the film but… show more.