Milan Kundera The Book of Laughter & Forgetting : 'A masterpiece' (Salman

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 JacobsonOne is torn between profound pleasure in the novels execution and wonder at the pain that inspired it. Ian McEwan One freezing day in 1948, Klement Gottwald addresses Prague, wearing his comrade Clementis fur cap and Communist Czechoslovakia is born. But after being hanged for treason, Clementis is airbrushed out of propaganda photographs. All that remains is a bare wall, and his cap. So begins an unforgettable voyage through seven narratives, interspersed with luminous meditations on politics, philosophy, music and history. A dissident seeks his first lover now a Party loyalist to persuade her to return his romantic letters. A married couple manages their mnagetrois as Mother moves in. A clandestine horoscope writer is questioned. An migr widow struggles to reconstruct memories of her late husband, before finding herself on an island of children. A butchers wife embarks on an affair with a poetic student. And one man prepares to cross the border . . . What readers are sayingKundera embrace politics, sex, philosophy and history, with a seenitall cynicism that nevertheless manages to be fascinating and even uplifting ... It was addictive and fun, sexy and cool, easy to read, and made... | Milan Kundera The Book of Laughter & Forgetting : 'A masterpiece' (Salman