Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 809
EAN: 9780060841959
ISBN: 0060841958
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 176
Publication Date: January 01, 2008
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Release Date: December 26, 2007
Studio: Harper Perennial

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• The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel
• Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts
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Editorial Review:

Product Description:


In this thought-provoking, endlessly enlightening, and entertaining essay on the art of the novel, renowned author Milan Kundera suggests that "the curtain" represents a ready-made perception of the world that each of us has—a pre-interpreted world. The job of the novelist, he argues, is to rip through the curtain and reveal what it hides. Here an incomparable literary artist cleverly sketches out his personal view of the history and value of the novel in Western civilization. In doing so, he celebrates a prose form that possesses the unique ability to transcend national and language boundaries in order to reveal some previously unknown aspect of human existence.






Rating: - Excellent reading
Milan Kundera gives us a new insite on what makes a novel a different type of literature. He is widely read, witty and light. At the same time his opinions are thought provoking and the breadth and appropriateness of his quotations a joy to read. I must say that I read the book in one rainy weekend sitting and that it has been a long time since I have enjoyed so much following an author's thought process.

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Rating: - The Best of Kundera's Criticism
The Curtain is Kundera's third work of literary criticism/theory and it is, in my view, the best. It is more focused than Art of the Novel and less bitter than Testaments Betrayed. Here Kundera presents extremely readable and pointed analyses of several works and, more importantly, provides a larger argument about the role of the novel in the world and its moral capabilities. He provides insights into several well known writers such as Cervantes and Kafka, but he has also alerted me to many writers ... Read More

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Rating: - An Aesthetic Literary Critic
In The Curtain, which in fact is a series of separate pieces, each of which are further divided into component pieces, Kundera presents the novel and novelists in a tableau of history, politics, and culture. His manner is discursive. Among his shaggy dog elements: the novel as psychological exploration of character or as existential analysis; phenomenological observations on the workings of memory; Rabelais, Cervantes, and Hermann Broch (The Sleepwalkers) as stand-alone contributors to the nonlinear history ... Read More

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Rating: - The genius behind 'The Curtain.'
It is unfortunate many readers of serious fiction will never read this book. Milan Kundera (1929) is a Czech-born writer who writes mostly in French these days. He is best known for his novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel (Perennial Classics) (1984), a profound exploration of the fragile nature of the life of an individual. Following The Art of the Novel (1985) and Testaments Betrayed (1992), his seven-part essay, The Curtain, is part three in a trilogy of essays on the European novel. Translated ... Read More

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Rating: - A Literary Charismatic
Kundera's book about the novel is not exactly as billed. These are not seven
essays. What we have is a set of notes, some speculations and assertions about
the past and future of the novel and its place in the world of literature and art.

Since these happen to be the spectulations of one of the most radically unsentimental
writers of our time, they are very valuable indeed. As the thoughts of a writer
whose work inspires other novelists (well, okay, this novelist) to keep writing, ... Read More

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