The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Characters/People edit see section history

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• Tomas: He got involved in political issue and has to move to the country side.
• Tereza: Passive wife of Tomas; photojournalist involved in capturing the Soviet occupation of Prague; loves Tomas and struggles to accept his dichotomy of sex and love.
• Sabina: Tomas' mistress and close friend; an intellectual who protests against kitsch and puritanism. A symbol of living a "light" life.
• Franz: A professor in Geneva who falls in love with Sabina.
• Karenin: Tomas and Tereza's dog.
• Marie-Claude: Wife of Franz.
• Marie-Anne: Daughter of Franz and Marie-Anne.
• Mefisto: A pig that Karenin (Tomas and Tereza's dog) befriends in the country.

Quotes edit see section history

• “...the idea of eternal return implies a perspective from which things appear other than as we know them: they appear without the mitigating circumstance of their transitory nature. This mitigating circumstance prevents us from coming to a verdict. For how can we condemn something that is ephemeral, in transit? in the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine... in this world everything is pardoned in advance and therefore cynically permitted."”

  Narrator

• “The characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities”

• “Yes, a husband's funeral is a wife's true wedding”

• “Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.”

• “Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.”

• “We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come”

• “Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).”

• “But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave”

• “loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they, too, fade away.”

• “Because love means renouncing strength”

• “Now we are longtime outcasts, flying through the emptiness of time in a straight line. Yet somewhere deep down a thin thread stil ties us to that far-off misty Paradise, where Adam leans over a well and, unlike Narcissus, never even suspects that the pale yellow blotch appearing in it is he himself. The longing for Paradise is man's longing not to be man.”

• “True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.”

• “A question is like a knife that slices through the stage backdrop and gives us a look at what lies hidden behind it.”

• “Flirting is a promise of sexual intercourse without a guarantee.”

• “Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.”

• “What does it mean to live in truth? Putting it negatively is easy enough: it means not lying, not hiding, and not dissimulating.”

• “…the moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind, means living in lies…”

• “"The goals we pursue are always veiled."”

• “Tomas did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love.”

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Prague
• Geneva
• Zurich
• Cambodia
• Paris
• Europe
• Switzerland
• America
• Russia
• Rome
• New York
• Petrin Hill
• Amsterdam

Organizations edit see section history

• Communist Party of Czechoslovakia: Add a description of this organization.

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• Kitsch: Describe this term.

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• Lightness and Weight: Describe this theme.
• Soul and Body
• Politics
• Sexuality
• Eternal return: A concept which posits that the universe has been recurring, and will continue to recur, in a self-similar form an infinite number of times across infinite time or space.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Preceded by Women in Love , and followed by Man and Boy.

Preceded by The Remains of the Day, and followed by Birdsong.

Preceded by On the Road, and followed by The World Is Flat.

Preceded by Nights at the Circus, and followed by Blood and Guts in High School.

Preceded by Girl with a Pearl Earring, and followed by Bridge to Terabithia.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Milan Kundera (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Michael Henry Heim (Translator) - Translated from Czech to English.
2. Jana Beranová (Translator) - Translated from Czech to Dutch

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• BBC's Big Read (April 2003, #191)
• Los Angeles Times Book Prize (1984: Fiction)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PG5039.21.U6N413
• Dewey: 891.8635

Notes for Parents edit see section history

The book contains considerable adult content.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary

Movie Connections edit see section history

• The Unbearable Lightness of Being (IMDb): Release Date: 5 February 1988 (USA)

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Books Cited by This Book edit see section history