The bestselling modern classic for fans of Dostoyevsky's White Nights and Sabahattin Ali's Madonna in a Fur Coat: the iconic novel of love, angst and politics in communist Czechoslovakia.A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon: a man torn between his love for her and his womanising. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals, while her other lover stands to lose everything because of his noble qualitie...

An invigorating duo of essays exploring exile, language and national identity from one of Europe's most celebrated literary stars and author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.89 Words, published in 1985, is an expanded version of the dictionary of sorts that readers encountered in The Art of the Novel, and comprises a fascinating and rigorous interrogation of what exile, life in another language, and the betrayals of ...

The bestselling masterpiece tale of love and exile in Prague by the author of modern classic The Unbearable Lightness of Being.'An artist, clearly one of the best to be found anywhere.' Salman Rushdie'A subtle, penetrating and deeply felt exploration of the sadness, loneliness and irreparable loss of exile: one of [Kundera's] best novels.' Sunday TimesIrena has been exiled to Paris since leaving C...

A provocative and rousing insight into European politics from one of the world's greatest writers.'One of his most powerful works.' Financial Times'A pan-European intellectual force.' TimesIn a moment of historic peril and uncertainty in mainland Europe, Milan Kundera makes the case for Central Europe as the nucleus of European values and as a lightning rod for its potential dangers.For the countries that ma...

'A masterpiece' (Salman Rushdie) by the author of modern classic The Unbearable Lightness of Being.'It took the temperature of the age as no other book did. It was the great novel of the end of European Communism: a novel of ideas and eroticism, the surreal and the naturalistic.' Howard Jacobson'One is torn between profound pleasure in the novel's execution and wonder at the pain that inspired it.' Ian McEwan

A philosophical masterpiece by the author of modern classic The Unbearable Lightness of Being.'An artist, clearly one of the best to be found anywhere.' Salman Rushdie'Kundera designs fictions of the highest order.' Ian McEwanChantal awaits her partner in a hotel on the Normandy coast, struggling to find him on a crowded beach. After mistaking him for a stranger, they reunite, and she reveals her fears of me...

A dazzling collection of stories - originally banned in 1968 Prague - by a ' magnificent short-story writer' ( NYT) and author of classic The Unbearable Lightness of Being.'A self-confessed hedonist in a world beset by politics . . . Marvellous.' Salman Rushdie'Kundera's achievement has been to bring both private life and political life into one comic framework.' Ian McEwanOn holida...

A heady, existential tale of seduction and romance by the author of modern classic The Unbearable Lightness of Being.'An artist, clearly one of the best to be found anywhere.' Salman Rushdie'Kundera designs fictions of the highest order.' Ian McEwan'Audacity, wit and sheer brilliance.' New York Times Book ReviewIn a French château on a midsummer's night, two tales of seducti...

A dazzling tragicomic tale from the author of modern classic The Unbearable Lightness of Being.'Anyone reading Kundera's books is unlikely to forget them. They have an essential energy, a difference.' New Statesman'Kundera is a self-confessed hedonist in a world beset by politics . . . Marvellous.' Salman RushdieKlima, a celebrated jazz trumpeter, learns that a young nurse with whom he spent one br...

An invigorating novelistic essay, rich in literary wisdom, from the i nternational superstar author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.'A masterpiece.' Independent'Nothing so much as a gauntlet, thrown down by Kundera for both novelists and their readers to pick up - if we dare. ' ObserverStravinsky and Kafka meet with their friends Ansermet and Brod; Hemingway with his b...

A landmark essay about the value of the novel from the superstar author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.A magic curtain, woven of legends, hung before the world . . . Cervantes sent Don Quixote journeying and tore the curtain. The world opened before the knight errant in all the comical nakedness of its prose.'For Kundera, this curtain represents our individual, ready-made, pre-interpreted perceptions of the world. The job of the nove...

Jacques and His Master is a deliciously witty and entertaining 'variation' on Diderot's novel Jacques le fataliste, written for Milan Kundera's 'private pleasure' in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. When the 'heavy Russian irrationality' fell on Czechoslovakia he felt drawn to the spirit of the eighteenth century - 'And it seemed to me that nowhere was it to be found more densely concentrated than in that banquet of intelligence, humour and fantasy...