Unbearable Lightness of Being

James says: A balancing act of love, infidelity, desire, security, and how the thought of all of it can ultimately seem insignificant and light in the overall grand scheme of life. Yet, at the same time creating an existential burden that will make life feel unbearable. Straightforward writing that is authentic, pure, harsh, and delicate that will poke at all your emotions.

A young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing; one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover—these are the two couples whose story is told in this masterful novel

“Brilliant . . . A work of high modernist playfulness and deep pathos.”

—Janet Malcolm, New York Review of Books

This magnificent novel encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy, and embraces, it seems, all aspects of human existence. It juxtaposes geographically distant places (Prague, Geneva, Paris, Thailand, the United States, a forlorn Bohemian village); brilliant and playful reflections (on “eternal return,” on kitsch, on man and animals); and a variety of styles (from the farcical to the elegiac), to take its place as perhaps the major achievement of one of the world’s truly great writers.