Shabbat Reading: Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being

#whatireadovershabbat Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, translated by Michael Henry Heim (1984; trans. 1984)

Living is a heavy business. Living has no weight at all (I am dust and ashes, said Abraham to God). Each statement encapsulates a philosophy of life explored by Kundera through the choices of four characters (and the routine of a smiling dog) before and after 1968, when the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia. The Unbearable Lightness of Being is dream, screed, comedy, and romance rolled into one. A vivid imagining of different possibilities of living, which, bound to our one existence, only fiction lets us experience.