Ignorance - by Milan Kundera (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

"Kundera once more delivers a seductive, intelligent entertainment ... [with] elegance and grace." -- Washington Post Book World

"Nothing short of masterful." -- Newsweek

A brilliant novel set in contemporary Prague, by one of the most distinguished writers of our time.

A man and a woman meet by chance while returning to their homeland, which they had abandoned 20 years earlier when they chose to become exiles. Will they manage to pick up the thread of their strange love story, interrupted almost as soon as it began and then lost in the tides of history? The truth is that after such a long absence "their memories no longer match." We always believe that our memories coincide with those of the person we loved, that we experienced the same thing. But this is just an illusion. Only those who return after 20 years, like Ulysses returning to his native Ithaca, can be dazzled and astounded by observing the goddess of ignorance first-hand.

Kundera is the only author today who can take dizzying concepts such as absence, memory, forgetting, and ignorance, and transform them into material for a novel, masterfully orchestrating them into a polyphonic and moving work.

From the Back Cover

A New York Times Notable Book

Irena and Josef meet by chance while returning to their homeland, which they had abandoned twenty years earlier. Will they manage to pick up the thread of their strange love story, interrupted almost as soon as it began and then lost in the tides of history? The truth is that after such a long absence "their memories no longer match."

Review Quotes

"Erudite and playful...An impassioned account of the émigré as a character on the stage of European history." - Maureen Howard, New York Times Book Review

"Milan's Kundera's resonant new novel IGNORANCE ....[is] wonderfully nuanced .... affecting." - Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"Literary excellence ... [Kundera's] irony and wit are ...on target, his characters vivid and convincing." - Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Moving ... There is a painful injustice and inequality to memory, which these encounters beautifully illustrate." - Boston Globe

"Elegant ... the emotional and intellectual payoff is extraordinary." - Time Out New York

"By far his most successful [novel] since THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING." - Los Angeles Times Book Review

"A tour de force." - Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Resonant ... Wonderfully nuanced .... Graceful." - Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"Kundera is and elegant writer ... He does a masterful job of reminding that the political is the personal." - Rocky Mountain News

"Kundera once more delivers a seductive, intelligent entertainment ... [with] elegance and grace." - Washington Post Book World

"[A] beautifully written tale of desire and loss." - Newark Star Ledger

"Rendered with compassion and humor." - Library Journal

"Precise and spare ...page by page this novel is dazzling." - Montreal Gazette

"An entertaining and thought-provoking work" - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"Nothing short of masterful." - Newsweek