books

Kundera's novels, in the order I'm reading them.

• The Joke (Žert): angrier than I remembered.
• Laughable Loves (Směšné lásky): men behaving badly, beautifully.
• Life Is Elsewhere (Život je jinde): the poet is exhausting. The book isn't.
• The Farewell Party (Valčík na rozloučenou): a spa town, a pill, a waltz.
• The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Kniha smíchu a zapomnění): Tamina and her letters.
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí): read twice. Pavel's pencil, then Tomáš's Toronto copy.
• Immortality (Nesmrtelnost): a woman's wave of the hand.
• Slowness: the first one he wrote in French. Tomáš refuses to discuss it.
• Identity: who do you become when someone stops looking at you?
• Ignorance: about coming home. I cried at the airport scene.
• The Festival of Insignificance: reading it slowly.