Immortality

by Kundera, Milan

• ISBN13: 9780060932381
• ISBN10: 0060932384
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-01-04
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

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 explore thoroughly the great, themes of existence.

"Brilliantly mordant...beautifully translated...strong and mesmerizing."- New York Times

"Ingenious witty provocative and formidably intelligent, both a pleasure and a challenge to the reader." -Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World

"Inspired Kundera's most brilliantly imagined novel...A book that entrances, beguiles and charms us from first page to last." - Susan Miron, Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Inspired Kundera's most brilliantly imagined novel...A book that entrances, beguiles and charms us from first page to last." - Susan Miron, Cleveland Plain Dealer

Table of Contents

PART ONE The face

PART TWO Immortality

PART THREE Fighting

The sisters

Dark glasses

The body

Addition and subtraction

Older woman, younger man The Eleventh Commandment

Imagology The brilliant ally of his own gravediggers A complete ass

The cat The gesture of protest against a violation of human rights To be absolutely modern

To be a victim of one's fame Fighting

Professor Avenarius

The body The gesture of longing for immortality

Ambiguity The clairvoyant

Suicide

Dark glasses

PART FOUR Homo sentimentalis

PART FIVE Chance

PART SIX The dial

PART SEVEN The celebration