"Ingenious witty provocative and formidably intelligent, both a pleasure and a challenge to the reader." — Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World
Milan Kundera's sixth novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman to her swimming instructor, a gesture that creates a character in the mind of a writer named Kundera. Like Flaubert's Emma or Tolstoy's Anna, Kundera's Agnès becomes an object of fascination, of indefinable longing. From that character springs a novel, a gesture of the imagination that both embodies and articulates Milan Kundera's supreme mastery of the novel and its purpose: to explore thoroughly the great themes of existence.
"Ingenious witty provocative and formidably intelligent, both a pleasure and a challenge to the reader." — Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World
"Brilliantly mordant...beautifully translated...strong and mesmerizing." — New York Times
"Inspired Kundera's most brilliantly imagined novel...A book that entrances, beguiles and charms us from first page to last." — Cleveland Plain Dealer
