About this item
Highlights
- "I will say no more about this lacerating book except to urge it upon all who care about literature in our difficult era.
- Author(s): Milan Kundera & Aaron Asher
- 432 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Literary
Description
About the Book
Out of print since 1987, "Life Is Elsewhere" is available again in an outstanding new translation. Kundera's epic of adolescence tenderly erodes such sacrosanct values as childhood, motherhood, revolution, and even poetry, in a "remarkable portrait of an artist as a young man" ("Newsweek").Book Synopsis
"I will say no more about this lacerating book except to urge it upon all who care about literature in our difficult era." -- Boston Globe
"A sly and merciless lampoon of revolutionary romanticism. . . Kundera commits some of the funniest literary savaging since Evelyn Waugh polished off Dickens in A Handful of Dust."-- Time
Milan Kundera initially intended to call this novel The Lyrical Age. The lyrical age, according to him, 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 him a 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.
From the Back Cover
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 him a 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.
Review Quotes
"I will say no more about this lacerating book except to urge it upon all who care about literature in our difficult era." -- Boston Globe
"Tender and unsparing. . . Life Is Elsewhere is a remarkable portrait of an artist as a young man." -- Newsweek
"A sly and merciless lampoon of revolutionary romanticism...Kundera commits some of the funniest literary savaging since Evelyn Waugh polished off Dickens in A Handful of Dust." -- Time
"Brilliant." -- Sunday Times (London)