The Unbearable Lightness of Being

This has easily been one of the most powerful books I have read in a long long time. It blew me over. Reading the book was reminiscent of the heady feeling of drunkenness that overwhelms you on discovering new love, on listening to Pt. Jasraj live in an auditorium for the first time, on having the first furtive kiss, on seeing the sun dance on the water to make way for the moon on the banks of the Ganga for the first time. The book was almost cathartic in how it forced me to slow down for a second to absorb the enormity of what I had just read.
Milan Kundera is a genius and “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” is perhaps his most recognized work. I have read “The Art of a Novel” and “Identity” by him earlier, had my aha moments with both of them but now they just pale in comparison.
The book like many of Milan Kundera’s work does not follow a time or a narrative continuum rather it follows an emotion continuum. Various incidents, people and places figure in the book as and when they are indispensable pieces of the jigsaw puzzle of the emotion that is being explored. But nothing is incongruous or disparate, all characters, all subplots and all subtexts come together harmoniously to create this wonderful story. Something completely distinctive (that perhaps makes this book a masterpiece) about Milan Kundera’s style of writing is that he defines characters not by how they look or what they wear, not even by what they say but by what they think and why they think and how they think. Finally the backdrop of the book is the chequered and tattered life of East European communist nations, but in this great book political theory plays second fiddle to the people and their emotions that get affected by politics, politics almost becomes personal.
Enough said, will complete the review with some of the gems that stayed back with me from the book. I don’t think you need a context to appreciate them but if you do then don’t forget to pick up the book.


“For there is nothing heavier than compassion “

“If mother was sacrifice personified then a daughter was Guilt with no possibility of redress”

“Of course I am happy.. The only kind of woman who can say that is very… limited. .. Not limited, very anachronistic.”

“But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak have to be strong enough to leave.”

“Love was not an extension of public life but its antithesis.”

“Music was the negation of sentences, music was the anti word.”

“The first betrayal is irreparable. It calls forth a chain reaction of further betrayals, each of which takes us farther and farther away from our first betrayal.”

“Because love means renouncing strength”

“What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable light ness of being.”

“Indeed, the only truly serious questions are the ones that even a child can formulate.”

“It is a tragicomic fact that our proper upbringing has become an ally of the secret police. We do not know how to lie”

“Human time does not run in a circle, it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy, happiness is the longing for repetition”