6 Reasons to Read ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ Right Now
A famous 20th century novel of ideas provides unexpected illumination for the early 21st century.
Originally published in 1984, Milan Kundera’s most famous book, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, examines how a police state gnarled the existentialist journey of its main characters. After Soviet troops crushed the 1968 Prague Spring, the newly emboldened Communist Party of Czechoslovakia imposed a new regime of conformist irrationality. Politics lost all authenticity. Decades after the fall of Communism in Europe, here are six reasons the book applies to our time.
1. When facts no longer matter, nothing halts the onslaught of meaninglessness
Sabina, the artist, hates the May Day Parades. In her voice, Kundera writes,
The May Day ceremony drew its inspiration from the deep well of the categorical agreement with being. The unwritten, unsung motto of the parade was not “Long Live Communism” but “Long live life!” The power and cunning of Communist politics lay in the fact that it appropriated this slogan. For it was this idiotic tautology (“Long…
