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Immortality (Perennial Classics) Paperback – October 20, 1999
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New York Times Bestseller
"Inspired. . . . Kundera's most brilliantly imagined novel. . . . A book that entrances, beguiles and charms us from first page to last." — Cleveland Plain Dealer
Milan Kundera's sixth novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman to her swimming instructor, a gesture that creates a character in the mind of a writer named Kundera. Like Flaubert's Emma or Tolstoy's Anna, Kundera's Agnès becomes an object of fascination, of indefinable longing. From that character springs a novel, a gesture of the imagination that both embodies and articulates Milan Kundera's supreme mastery of the novel and its purpose: to explore thoroughly the great themes of existence.
- Print length352 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarper Perennial Modern Classics
- Publication dateOctober 20, 1999
- Dimensions5.31 x 0.83 x 8 inches
- ISBN-100060932384
- ISBN-13978-0060932381
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Ingenious, witty, provocative, and formidably intelligent, both a pleasure and a challenge to the reader." — Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World
"Brilliantly mordant. . . beautifully translated. . . strong and mesmerizing." — New York Times
"Inspired. . . . Kundera's most brilliantly imagined novel. . . . A book that entrances, beguiles and charms us from first page to last." — Cleveland Plain Dealer
From the Back Cover
Milan Kundera's sixth novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman to her swimming instructor, a gesture that cre-ates a character in the mind of a writer named Kundera. Like Flaubert's Emma or Tolstoy's Anna, Kundera's Agnès becomes an object of fascination, of indefinable longing. From that character springs a novel, a gesture of the imagination that both embodies and articulates Milan Kundera's supreme mastery of the novel and its purpose: to explore thoroughly the great themes of existence.
About the Author
Milan Kundera is the author of the novels The Joke, Farewell Waltz, Life Is Elsewhere, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Immortality, and the short-story collection Laughable Loves—all originally written in Czech. His most recent novels Slowness, Identity, and Ignorance, as well as his nonfiction works The Art of the Novel, Testaments Betrayed, The Curtain, and Encounter, were originally written in French.
From The Washington Post
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Immortality
By Kundera, MilanPerennial
Copyright ©2004 Milan KunderaAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0060932384
Chapter One
The woman might have been sixty or sixty-five. I was watching her from a deck chair by the pool of my health club, on the top floor of a high-rise that provided a panoramic view of all Paris.I was waiting for Professor Avenarius, whom I'd occasionally meet here for a chat.But Professor Avenarius was late and I kept watching the woman; she was alone in the pool, standing waist-deep in the water, and she kept looking up at the young lifeguard in sweat pants who was teaching her swim. He was giving her orders: she was to hold on to the to the edge of the pool and breathe deeply in and out. She proceeded to do this earnestly, seriously, and it was as if an old steam engine were wheezing from the depths of the water (that idyllic sound, now long forgotten, which to those who never knew it can be described in no better way than the wheezing of an old woman breathing in and out by the edge ofa pool). I watched her in fascination. She captivated me by her touchingly comic manner (which the lifeguard also noticed, for the corner of his mouth twitched slightly). Then an acquaintance started talking to me and diverted my attention.When I was ready to observe her once again the lesson was over.She walked around the pool toward the exit.She passed the lifeguard, and after she had gone some three or four steps beyond him, she turned her head smiled, and waved to him.At that instant I felt a pang in my heart! That smile and that gesture belonged to a twenty-year-old girl! Her arm rose with bewitching ease. It was as if she were playfully tossing a brightly colored ball to her lover. That smile and that gesture had charm and elegance, while the face and the body no longer had any charm.It was the charm of a gesture drowning in the charmlessness of the body. But the woman, though she must of course have realized that she was no longer beautiful, forgot that for the moment. There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time.Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.In any case, the instant she turned, smiled, and waved to the young lifeguard (who couldn't control himself and burst out laughing), she was unaware of her age.The essence of her charm, independent of time, revealed itself for a second in that gesture and dazzled me.I was strangely moved.And then the word Agnes entered my mind.Agnes.I had never known a woman by that name.
Continues...Excerpted from Immortalityby Kundera, Milan Copyright ©2004 by Milan Kundera. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- Publisher : Harper Perennial Modern Classics (October 20, 1999)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0060932384
- ISBN-13 : 978-0060932381
- Item Weight : 9.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.31 x 0.83 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #155,124 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4,571 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- #10,278 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors

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.

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The other part of the plot is centered on the anecdotal relation between Goethe and Bettina. It's a long discussion of how the title of the book, immortality, figures in in a relationship such as that between Goethe and Bettina. The story itself is fascinating enough that I never raised a question as to why the two plots are set side by side. I might come upon some insight later on, but one thing is pretty clear, Bettina is what Agnes is not. Even though the book seems to caste Agnes' sister Laura as Agnes' opposite, Bettina is the real counterpart to Agnes. One yearns for immortality in the public memory, the other for a quiet, private understanding. And from the sympathy he bestows upon Agnes, it is quite obvious that Kundera is partial to Agnes' kind yearning. But he also understands Bettina perfectly well. After all, he shares the same yearning for immortality.
2) Characters (2 stars) - There's Agnes and her sister's husband, there's old Goethe and his young lover Bettina who tries to capture his legacy, and there's a few others. Some of the observations Kundera made on them were interesting, but they just seemed so distant, so much a vehicle for his musings, that I cared nothing for them, and often forgot their personalities from one scene to the next.
3) Theme (4 stars) - As one can guess from the title, the big theme here is immortality--about how most are forgotten when they die, a few are remembered by friends and family, and fewer still are remembered by strangers. This last kind is called "fame" and the quest for it has consumed humans throughout history. That is, until they actually get it and see how a legacy beyond your control--an eternal trial--might be worse than no legacy at all. It's an interesting topic, one that gets to some of our core fears like death and what is the purpose of all this, and Kundera does a good job exploring this theme through various historical examples.
4) Voice (3 stars) - Kundera clinically dissects and investigates the psyches of his characters, but he is not cold and sterile in his dissections. He is warm, caring, compassionate. In this way he reminds me of a father to his grown children of characters. He knows them well, is curious about their decisions, gives them their distance, but in the end always roots for them to come out okay. This is an unusual approach towards characters and story, and in The Unbearable Lightness of Being I found it brilliant and engaging. However, in this work the tangents were just so long and so focused on philosophical minutia that I sometimes lost interest.
5) Setting (1 star) - A little bit in modern Europe, a little bit in historical Europe, a little bit in heaven. But often it felt like the scenes were taking place in no place at all, a void.
6) Overall (2 stars) - I loved The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I thought it was insightful and beautifully written, and I eagerly wanted to learn more from Kundera. But this just felt like a mess, like a bunch of random musings he had over the years loosely stapled to a few sketches of characters and a skeleton plot. It's too bad. If there is another Kundera book out there that's even 75% of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, I'd love to read it. This wasn't it.
I felt that Milan Kundera's viewpoint on immortality is more geared towards the artists' community.
There are definitely very many points that I started feeling it is now becoming more general, but a lot of interruptions in the story made it sometimes hard to follow the main point.
I personally enjoyed his other work better, i.e. The unbearable lightness of being, primarily due to less interruptions in the main story.
Top reviews from other countries
This kind of novel is one that I truly love - one that pulls enjoyable fiction in with accessible philosophy. Having fond (albeit extremely vague) memories of experiencing The Unbearable Lightness of Being, I was overjoyed when Betty chose Immortality as this months book club choice. I say 'experiencing' instead of 'reading' because that is exactly how Kundera's work comes across. It takes you on a journey of thought and expression that most ordinary novels simply can't do.
A philosophical novel, Kundera weaves his thoughts into the thinly stretched story of Agnes and her life, her family. His fictional family crash up against 'real-life' (Avenarius and himself) with surprising regularity and even more surprising clarity - a feature of writing that I think I will always love. The story itself is endearing and Agnes is a likeable character but without the philosophy behind it, it would be nothing. Kundera uses her tale to express his thoughts on society, on life, on history and of course, on immortality - that thing that so many strive for. Kundera seemingly flicks from one thought to another but they all wind together seamlessly, making the read fascinating. His theories on imagology, journalism, politics and the self truly get you thinking and I'm inclined to agree with him on most of it.
And so I find myself sat here again, staring at the screen, wondering how to end the review. It really is amazing just how quickly Kundera had my brain racing as I was reading the novel and just how quickly Kundera has stopped me in my tracks when I have to explain myself.
Well worth a read.
I have bought this as a replacement to a lost lent copy - from years back.
love this story and how it weaves lives, and the recognition of who remembers who/what.
A good read. - looking forward to re-reading it.













