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A young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing; one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover -- these are the two couples whose story is told in this masterful novel. In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence, we feel "the unbearable lightness of being" not only as the consequence of our pristine actions but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine.

Average Customer Rating:

Unbearable...es muss sein!

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What a deeply boring book The Unbearable Lightness of Being is. And the title is just as perfect as it could be. I decided to read the book because of the movie to see if the book is much better. As claimed before The Unbearable Lightness of Being is an unfilmable novel, I actually don't agree since there were certain things that went unexplained in the film. So, I got some of them solved by reading the book. Honestly, the movie is way better and done so well if not mystifying, but the book, I felt so bored, unmoved, and ridiculously tired. Milan Kundera, the author of the novel, jumps the timeline around too much that it got confusing as if the pages came out of a blender. And then he goes further by over-philosophizing some aspects. When that was done, he is basically saying that adultery is acceptable, that women ought to be treated as objects, and that it is perfectly okay to sleep with many as possible. Of course, in that process as I quickly learned, sex will become meaningless except to those who have chemical imbalances in the brains. I was hoping that, as shown in the film, to gain some insight about the tensions created in Czechoslovakia and how they got flared up, I would learn from the book. Although it didn't really explain very well, I figured, "Heck, I should find a book on the history of that country instead of getting it through The Unbearable Lightness of Being." The last part of the book is about a dead dog for twenty or so pages. That's a nice way to depress me. All in all, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, albeit sometimes well-written, features pretentious characters searching for meaningful sex but ending up looking sillier than a boy fooling around with a donkey.

great

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i really enjoyed this book, it's one of those ones you have to think about. the story follows two couples, tomas and tereza and sabina and franz. these people are used to embody certain ideals and characteristics, and i interpreted their actions more as metaphor rather than just an act in itself. i suppose one of the major themes in the book is expressed in the title, this idea of weight in association with how we interact with the world, and whether or not it is a good or bad thing to have. i understood the weight to be our ties to the world, our responsibilities. like a sac we carry. the question is -is it better to have the sac full of stuff you may need or want with you or is it better to be unburdened? what i found helpful was that for the perspectives presented, the opposite perspective is presented to contrast, neither one being more right than the other. each of the four main characters had some sort of struggle they were attempting to overcome (which i loved reading about. there is nothing more enlightening and empowering than to watch someone overcome what discontents them). all of the struggles have to do with how the characters interact with those they know, which i saw to be a preference for either weight or lightness. this is one of those books you could (and should) spend hours thinking about.

I lived in this book those days

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Can't forget the days when I was reading this novel. It felt I was living inside the book with those engrossing characters all the time. And when I was not reading it, I'd feel as if I had stepped out for a while and ould eagerly wait to re-enter that amazing world of romance and complications once again. A must read for those who believe that love is only a small part of life, for here life is a small part of love.

The Fashionable Triteness of Something or Another

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'68. "Socialism with a Human face." Sexual Liberation et. al. Pose straw men and women and shake their hands, then take them to bed, several times moreover, and in different combinations. Mmm just can't get enough of that plaid . . . Just heavy enough to discipline a cat with (not quite 1 lb) and just ontologically void enough to deflate your mind and defuse the imagination before you are able to (some 320 pgs, being 100 shy of 420 pages). This is the novel that defined a generation: that elected (x series of politicians), sexed up (insert anonymous free thinkers), toked up (x quanta of drug[s]). Now they tell you to shut up and rock the vote, Just say NO, Just say No and express yourself, but be sure to raise your hand first so you can wave that flag all the more higher. This is one of those books that make the eternal recurrence of the same that much heavier, beach reading during tsunami season, torchère for a mind on fire with rage. BUY NOW PAY LATER . . . Reading this book will make you more productive and in touch with the weltgeist and your inner child. What's that something of a salvo to broadside that thicket eh? Right through that protest in 19

Mystical Love

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This book may not be for everyone but I simply loved it. A love story with a philosophical bent it leaves you questioning your own life and decisions. Burdened by love or light enough to achieve beauty or somewhere in between? This quote from the beginning of the book says it all: "The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?"