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  • The Art of the Novel: Milan Kundera's Essays on the Philosophy, Evolution, and Essence of Fiction (Perennial Classics)

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The Art of the Novel: Milan Kundera's Essays on the Philosophy, Evolution, and Essence of Fiction (Perennial Classics)

4.1 out of 5 stars (158)

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“Incites us to reflect on fiction and philosophy, knowledge and truth, and brilliantly illustrates the art of the essay.” — The New Republic

"Every novelist's work contains an implicit vision of the history of the novel, an idea of what the novel is. I have tried to express the idea of the novel that is inherent in my own novels." — Milan Kundera

Kundera brilliantly examines the evolution, construction, and essence of the novel as an art form through the lens of his own work and through the work of such important and diverse figures as Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne, Diderot, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Musil, Kafka, and perhaps the least known of all the great novelists of our time, Hermann Broch.

Kundera's discussion of his own work includes his views on the role of historical events in fiction, the meaning of action, and the creation of character in the post-psychological novel.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Lucid, detached, and epigrammatic …The book has its author’s familiar swiftness and variety of attack and his elegant, provocative irony.” - The New Yorker

From the Back Cover

Kundera brilliantly examines the work of such important and diverse figures as Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne, Diderot, Flaubert, Tolstoy, and Musil. He is especially penetrating on Hermann Broch, and his exploration of the world of Kafka's novels vividly reveals the comic terror of Kafka's bureaucratized universe.

Kundera's discussion of his own work includes his views on the role of historical events in fiction, the meaning of action, and the creation of character in the post-psychological novel.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Perennial Modern Classics
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 1, 2003
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ Reprint
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 170 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0060093749
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0060093747
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.31 x 0.43 x 8 inches
  • Best Sellers Rank: #69,350 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 out of 5 stars (158)

About the author

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Milan Kundera
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Milan Kundera, born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, was a student when the Czech Communist regime was established in 1948, and later worked as a labourer, jazz musician and professor at the Institute for Advanced Cinematographic Studies in Prague. After the Russian invasion in August 1968, his books were proscribed. In 1975, he and his wife settled in France, and in 1981, he became a French citizen. He is the author of the novels The Joke, Life is Elsewhere, Farewell Waltz, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Immortality, and of the short-story collection Laughable Loves - all originally in Czech. His most recent novels, Slowness, Identity and Ignorance, as well as his non-fiction works The Art of the Novel and Testaments Betrayed, were originally written in French.

Photo by Elisa Cabot (Flickr) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
158 global ratings

Customers say

Customers find the book essential reading for writers, with one review highlighting its insights into Kundera's great works. However, the readability receives negative feedback, with several customers noting it is not well readable.
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12 customers mention content, 11 positive, 1 negative
Customers find the book essential reading for writers, praising its insights into novel writing and its exploration of Kundera's great works.
This is a good and insightful book....Read more
...to read, but Kundera is very simple, very concise, and yet also explanatory....Read more
In these brilliant reflections Milan Kundera discusses fundamental characteristics of the novel, its history and its immorality....Read more
Perphaps one of the most interesting contemporary perspectives on the novel. Easy to read and ennjoyable. Milan Kundera proposes the novel as art....Read more
7 customers mention readability, 2 positive, 5 negative
Customers find the book difficult to read, with one customer noting that the print is microscopic and another mentioning that the text is cut off before the end.
...So much literary criticism is bloated and difficult to read, but Kundera is very simple, very concise, and yet also explanatory....Read more
...Not well readable, due to the small size. And it's cartoonish, laughably small. This item should not have been sold as it is....Read more
...Easy to read and ennjoyable. Milan Kundera proposes the novel as art....Read more
This fake print-on-demand edition reproduces the pages at an unreadable tiny size, and cuts the text off before the end, in the middle of a sentence.Read more
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