The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Signed Association Copy)

KUNDERA, Milan

ISBN 10: 0394508963 / ISBN 13: 9780394508962

Published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1980

About this Item

First U.S. edition and first printing. Hardcover. 228 pages. The fifth book published in the U.S from the author of "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." A near fine copy in paper covered boards with a cloth spine with some slight color shift to the edges of the boards and in a near fine dust jacket with some very minor wear. Signed and very warmly inscribed by Kundera on the half title page in the year of publication. A spectacular association copy as the recipient was literary critic John Leonard who wrote a rapturous review of this book for the New York Times. From Leonard's review: "I ought to invoke Gunter Grass and Garcia Marquez because Mr. Kundera belongs in their demonic company. Dust off the glowing adjectives, those abused children, because they apply. A book reviewer is reduced to saying: this time, I really mean it.".

Seller Inventory # 214196

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Signed Association Copy)
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, New York
• Publication Date: 1980
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0394508963
• ISBN 13: 9780394508962
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Dust Jacket Condition: dj
• Weight: 2 pounds
• Signed: Signed
• Seller catalogs:
  • Literature

About this title

Synopsis

, 228 pages

Review

In one of the finer modern ironies of the life-imitates-art sort, the country that Kundera seemed to be writing about when he talked about Czechoslovakia is, thanks to the latest political redefinitions, no longer precisely there. This kind of disappearance and reappearance is, partly, what Kundera explores in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. In this polymorphous work -- now a novel, now autobiography, now a philosophical treatise -- Kundera discusses life, music, sex, philosophy, literature and politics in ways that are rarely politically correct, never classifiable but always original, entertaining and definitely brilliant.