The original Czech version was published by a Canadian company in 1985, but Kundera’s works were officially banned in Czechoslovakia until the end of the Cold War.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being was written and first published in French and was published in English the following year, in a translation by Michael Henry Heim. Why it’s a classic: Kundera left his home country in 1975 in frustration at the Communist regime and settled permanently in France. Tomas goes to sleep, apparently at peace with his life, unaware that he and Tereza will be killed in a car accident the following day. After euthanising their elderly dog Karenin, Tomas and Tereza visit a hotel where they stay the night. Sabina moves to America, while Franz travels to a medical delegation at the Thai-Cambodian border where he is killed in a street fight. Torn by the need to safeguard Tereza, he reluctantly agrees to move to a collective farm in the countryside. Tomas is forced to give up his job after writing an article critical of Soviet authorities, and becomes a window cleaner, resuming his womanising. Horrified by the “weight” of Franz’ expectations, she leaves him and relocates to Paris. Meanwhile, Sabina starts an affair with a married man named Franz, who leaves his wife for her. Initially elated at his new “lightness of being”, Tomas realises that life without Tereza is unbearable, and follows her, relinquishing his passport to Soviet border guards.

Tortured by Tomas’ infidelities, Tereza leaves him and returns to Soviet-occupied Prague. After the Russian invasion of Prague in 1968, the trio relocate to Switzerland. Which is best, the Narrator asks: lightness or weight? By way of example, the Narrator considers the story of Tomas, a womanising surgeon who falls in love with a naive young woman, Tereza, while continuing to see his mistress, the free-thinking artist Sabina. The Narrator ponders Nietschze’s theory of eternal return, pondering the paradox between the “ heaviness” of burdens that represent “ life’s most intense fulfilment” versus the “ lightness” of a life without burdens that makes existence “ insignificant“. What it’s about: Prague, Czechoslovakia, the 1960s. In which I review The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera’s celebrated 1984 novel about a philandering doctor, his unhappy wife and free-spirited mistress, set against the 1968 Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia.

The unbearable lightness of being novel