The Unbearable Lightness of Being

In 1968, Tomas — a Czech surgeon — meets Tereza, falls in love, and is condemned to choose: between lightness (freedom, multiplicity, the erotic adventures he cannot relinquish) and weight (love, commitment, the burden of another person’s complete dependence). Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being uses this love story as the vehicle for a sustained philosophical inquiry into one of the most fundamental questions of human existence: if life happens only once, and therefore nothing is ever rehearsed or corrected, is it unbearably light — or unbearably heavy?

Written in 1984 against the background of the Prague Spring and its suppression, the novel is simultaneously a Central European political tragedy, a love story of genuine emotional depth, and a philosophical essay in fictional form. Kundera’s narrating voice — ironic, erudite, playfully direct with the reader — was something genuinely new in world fiction.

One of the essential novels of the twentieth century — and the ideal starting point for Kundera’s extraordinary body of work. Published by Faber & Faber.