Milan Kundera’s new treatise on the novel – The Curtain – is being published in English in February 2007. Don’t miss this. Because not only is Kundera a master of the novel himself (Unbearable Lightness of Being, of course, but what about the Joke and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting?), but his analysis of the state of the novel is uber-insightful. I read The Art of the Novel about five years ago . . . and then read it again . . . and again, (speaking of that – I need to reread it again) and passed it off on my brother and anyone else who ventured within earshot. I’m just surprised, given Kundera’s fame, that they’ve taken so long to translate it. It was originally published in French in April 2005, and is available in Spanish, German, Polish, Greek and Croatian. Croatian? I didn’t know they had such a lively literary community that they beat out the English speaking world. Probably contract wrangling and stiff-necked publishing houses at fault, but at least HarperCollins is leaving all that to history.
Labels: Milan Kundera
2 comments
Thank you very much for the information. I’m an longtime admirer of Kundera’s work & really eager to read this book.
Hi again. I dared to translate & post it in my blog: https://elenakuzmina.blogspot.com/2006/11/blog-post.html
Thank you once again for the post. What a man – the title of this book is expressive…
Hah, by the way: God knows when the book appears in Russian. Even “The Art of Novel” is not available yet:(