Jana Beranová Book order (chronological)

Někdy vám do života vstoupí správné věci v nesprávnou dobu. Vrátil jsem se po letech, abych nalezl peklo i ráj. Přišel jsem o všechno, co jsem kdy znal. Ale uprostřed té temnoty jsem našel ji – světlo, které mě vede na mé cestě ke spravedlnosti, jež mne drží naživu v boji o pravdu a je mou nadějí, že ještě není vše ztraceno a i já mám své právo na štěstí. *** Roky jsem snila o svém spřízněném druhovi a pak se objevil on: silný, odvážný… a zlomený. S každým jeho pohledem i dotekem jsem věděla, že mu patří mé srdce. Jenže milovat někoho, kdo nosí takové jizvy, znamená čelit temnotě, která obklopuje nás oba. Ovšem láska, skutečná láska, je silnější než bolest a nespravedlnost – nebo v to alespoň musím věřit.

The author initially intended to call this novel, The Lyrical Age. The lyrical age, according to Kundera, is youth, and this novel, above all, is an epic of adolescence; an ironic epic that tenderly erodes sacrosanct values: childhood, motherhood, revolution, and even poetry. Jaromil is in fact a poet. His mother made hima poet and accompanies him (figuratively) to his love bed and (literally) to his deathbed. A ridiculous and touching character, horrifying and totally innocent ("innocence with its bloody smile"!), Jaromil is at the same time a true poet. He's no creep, he's Rimbaud. Rimbaud entrapped by the communist revolution, entrapped in a somber farce.

This is the first novel by the author of Immortality, which won The Independent Award for Foreign Fiction in 1991. Milan Kundera is also the author of The Book of Laughter and Fogetting.

Milan Kundera is a master of graceful illusion and illuminating surprise. In one of these stories a young man and his girlfriend pretend that she is a stranger he picked up on the road--only to become strangers to each other in reality as their game proceeds. In another a teacher fakes piety in order to seduce a devout girl, then jilts her and yearns for God. In yet another girls wait in bars, on beaches, and on station platforms for the same lover, a middle-aged Don Juan who has gone home to his wife. Games, fantasies, and schemes abound in all the stories while different characters react in varying ways to the sudden release of erotic impulses.

In this novel - a story of irreconcilable loves and infidelities - Milan Kundera addresses himself to the nature of twentieth-century 'Being' 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. We feel, says the novelist, 'the unbearable lightness of being' - not only as the consequence of our private acts but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine.Juxtaposing Prague, Geneva, Thailand and the United States, this masterly novel encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy, and embraces, it seems, all aspects of human existence. It offers a wide range of brilliant and amusing philosophical speculations and it descants on a variety of styles.

In a Bohemian spa, eight characters dance to the rhythm of a waltz that grows increasingly frenetic: the beautiful nurse Rosa, who tries to force her lover into marriage through an alleged paternity; Klima, the jazz musician who loves his wife Kamila, plagued by jealousy; Franta, Rosa's admirer and the true father of her unborn child; Dr. Skreta, an extravagant gynecologist; Bertlef, a wealthy American who indulges in love and art out of fear of death; Jakub, a political prisoner released from jail, embarking on a journey to the West; and Olga, Jakub's foster daughter, whom he unexpectedly falls for. Each character seeks to find meaning in their lives through desperate and ever-changing pairings, navigating the absurdities and complexities of love, identity, and existence.