"The Unbearable Lightness of Being"

    Since the library is closed due to the pandemic, and book clubs are not possible, I delved into a pile of books that I have collected over many years.  I latched onto this novel, because it reminded me of the person who recommended it.  
  I was a teacher-librarian in the 1980's and often got into conversations with staff members about books.  I remember the male teacher that told me that this was his favourite book, so I bought it then.  And it has been stored with many other books that I have bought over the years.

   Milan Kundera is the author of this book and it was extremely popular in the 1980's.  Well, it is certainly dated and would not be popular now.  "The Guardian" (British newspaper) said that Kundera wrote about "the male gaze, fixed on the female body, captivated by it, and spinning an elaborate theory on the basis of what it sees there".
  Tomas, the main character does marry, but made it clear that he believed that love and sexuality had nothing in common.  
   
  Quote: "She seemed like a child to him, a child someone had put in a bulrush basket daubed with pitch and sent downstream to Tomas to fetch at the riverbank of his bed".
  That sentence was interesting the first time, but was repeated often.  Teresa, the child in the bulrush basket was actually his wife and her dreams were described in detail.  Episodes in her life (and her dreams) kept repeating. 
    The narrative of Tomas and Teresa was often interrupted by long philosophical ramblings.  And the presence of the communist party in Czechoslovakia is described in detail, as that is where much of the story takes place.  One more interruption for me was the references to musical compositions. 
  To put it gently, it was an unusual novel.

   Kundera was born in Czechoslovakia in 1929, joined the Communist party, was expelled from the party and joined it again.  Eventually, after trying to reform the party, he gave up and moved to France.
  He rejected Nietzsche's concept of eternal return .  Interestingly, this is just the concept of a book that I read recently: "The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August"- coming back to the same life over and over.
  Kundera believed that Nietzsche had a 'heaviness', whereas Paremenides(a Greek philosopher), had a 'lightness of being'.  Hence, the title.