Let the Old Dead Make Room for the Young Dead

A young man visits his elderly father, who is dying, and finds himself unable to speak — unable to say the things that need to be said before the time for saying them ends. Kundera’s short story is among the most painful and most perfectly formed things he ever wrote: a meditation on time, on parenthood, on the words that remain unsaid between people who love each other and the specific silence of a generation that did not learn how to speak.

Published in the Faber Stories series, this is Kundera at his most distilled — a story that takes fifteen minutes to read and stays for much longer. The title refers to a Czech proverb: let the old dead make room for the young dead, so that the world can continue. The implications of that proverb, in the story’s context, are as rich and as dark as anything in Kundera’s novels.

Essential Kundera in miniature — beautiful and devastating. Published by Faber & Faber.