Laughable Loves

Milan Kundera; Suzanne Rappaport (Translator)

ISBN 10: 0140069860 / ISBN 13: 9780140069860

Published by Penguin Books, Limited, 1985

About this Item

Laughable Loves is a collection of stories that first appeared in print in Prague before 1968, but was then banned. The seven stories are all concerned with love, or rather with the complex erotic games and stratagems employed by women and especially men as they try to come to terms with needs and impulses that can start a terrifying train of events. Sexual attraction is shown as a game that often turns sour, an experience that brings with it painful insights and releases uncertainty, panic, vanity and a constant need for reassurance. Thus a young couple on holiday start a game of pretence that threatens to destroy their relationship, two middle-aged men go in search of girls they don't really want, a young man renews contact with an older woman who feels humiliated by her ageing body, an elderly doctor uses his beautiful wife to increase his attraction and minister to his sexual vanity. In Laughable Loves, Milan Kundera shows himself, once again, as a master of fiction's most graceful illusions and surprises. {"length"=>["19"], "width"=>["13"], "units"=>["Centimeters"]}.

Seller Inventory # 14660099

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Laughable Loves
• Publisher: Penguin Books, Limited
• Publication Date: 1985
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140069860
• ISBN 13: 9780140069860
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Slightly tanned pages.

About this title

Synopsis

Laughable Loves (Czech: Směšné lásky) is a collection of seven short stories written by Milan Kundera in which he presents his characteristic savage humour by mixing the extremes of tragedy with comic situations in (mostly romantic) relationships.


(from wikipedia.org)

From the Back Cover

Milan Kundera is a master of graceful illusion and illuminating surprise. In one of these stories a young man and his girlfriend pretend that she is a stranger he picked up on the road -- only to become strangers to each other in reality as their game proceeds. In another a teacher fakes piety in order to seduce a devout girl, then jilts her and yearns for God. In yet another girls wait in bars, on beaches, and on station platforms for the same lover, a middle-aged Don Juan who has gone home to his wife. Games, fantasies, and schemes abound in all the stories while different characters react in varying ways to the sudden release of erotic impulses.