The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
"An absolutely dazzling entertainment. . . . Arousing on every level—political, erotic, intellectual, and above all, humorous." —Newsweek
"The Book of Laughter and Forgetting calls itself a novel, although it is part fairy tale, part literary criticism, part political tract, part musicology, and part autobiography. It can call itself whatever it wants to, because the whole is genius." —New York Times
Rich in its stories, characters, and imaginative range, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is the novel that brought Milan Kundera his first big international success in the late 1970s. Like all his work, it is valuable for far more than its historical implications. In seven wonderfully integrated parts, different aspects of human existence are magnified and reduced, reordered and emphasized, newly examined, analyzed, and experienced.
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Community Reviews
Like any other Kundera’s novel, the book has seven parts that spreads, interconnected and interwoven concepts: power, memory, love, hedonism, forgetting, laughter, Russian occupation, and music. The book also reveals the seed for his next book, the unbearable lightness of being. It’s also autobiographical but soon disappears in melancholy.
Largely forgotten Kundera started as a poet and then settled as a novelist. It’s fully visible in litost story of a young poet.
Definitely, the book can’t be read on any day but on a day when memories can bring your time and memories weigh heavier than you can think.
Below are some of my favourite lines
1. struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting
2. The future is only an indifferent void no one cares about, but the past is filled with life, and its countenance is irritating, repellent, wounding, to the point that we want to destroy or repaint it. We want to be masters of the future only for the power to change the past.
3. Litost is a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery.
4. He shouted “Children, never look back!” and this meant that we must never allow the future to be weighed down by memory. For children have no past, and that is the whole secret of the magical innocence of their smiles.
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