Immortality
Milan Kundera (Author), Peter Kussi (Translator)
"Milan Kundera's sixth novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman to her swimming instructor, a gesture that creates a character in the mind of a writer named Kundera. Like Flaubert's Emma or Tolstoy's Anna, Kundera's Agnes becomes an object of fascination, of indefinable longing. From that character springs a novel, a gesture of the imagination that both embodies and articulates Milan Kundera's supreme mastery of the novel and its purpose: to thoroughly explore the great themes of existence. A work in seven parts, Immortality involves four contemporary characters-- Agnes, her husband Paul, her sister Laura, and the sad hedonist Rubens-- as well as the curious historic couple of Goethe and Bettina von Arnim. Through these characters, Kundera reflects with powerful insight on modern life and Western society. But, as always with Kundera, the true theme of the novel is elsewhere; his subject is existential and metaphysical. The cult of sentimentality, its role in our lives and in the history of the West, and the conflict between the individual and his image: here, in an unforgettable scene, we encounter our own Hemingway in heaven with Goethe, discussing the sorrows of immortality, the powerlessness of man before an image of himself over which he has no control. Immortality, intelligent, original, funny, and entirely captivating, is a major novel by one of the most acclaimed writers of our time." -- Publisher's Description
Print Book, English, 1991
First American edition
Grove Weidenfeld, New York, 1991