![]() ![]() Both were exiles from their native land and both fantasized about the destiny that would have been theirs had they not been exiles. The conjunction of the names of Kundera and Joyce is appropriate. Formerly marginalized colonies produced formidable writers such as James Joyce in Ireland and Jaroslav Seifert and Milan Kundera in the former state of Czechoslovakia. Under the influence of modernism provincial modes collapsed. Its works of the nineteenth century served the purposes of nationalism and shared the defects of a colonized culture – preoccupation with local problems and imitation of foreign literary models. Literature from Central Europe is largely unknown and thus rather exotic. But Orwell’s book, great as it is, was a handbook on the subject. The other great book on the subject of totalitarian states was Orwell’s 1984. The year of publication means something all by itself. It is as if we had circled around the narrative and are ever coming into more precise focus. There is an increase in poignancy as the book progresses. These loops cover areas that are approximately the same but with each cycle of narration the details become different and the narrative track assumes different directions. He achieves this by a use of narrative loops. ![]() In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a book of moderate length, Kundera provides a richness of content out of all proportion to its length. ![]()
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