The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera was born in Czechoslovakia.  When they were invaded by Russia in 1968, he lost his job as a teacher and his writings were removed from libraries.  He wasn’t allowed to publish either.  I guess they did not like what he had say. 

This is a book of short stories.  The first story is about Mirek.  He is attempting to retrieve some letters that he left in the house of an old girlfriend, Zdena.  Since they are not in a relationship anymore, she is not very willing to give him his property.   Those letters contain information that could be used against him so they are quite important to him. Unfortunately, he goes to prison and never gets those letters.

The 2^nd story, a different set of characters – are they swingers? Yes…Swingers with a twist because the wife set up the whole shebang!

Tamina is in the chapter Lost Letters.  Her late husband was named Mirek.  Not the same Mirek as in the first story.  She does not want to forget him.  She also tries to retrieve some letters – making her mind go a little cuckoo...

The last story is titled Borders.  All Jan talks about is sex.  Somehow he equates everything in life being within borders – men/women, life/death. 

The story that I liked the most was Litost.  Litost is explained as “a state of torment caused by sudden insight into one’s own miserable self.”  I like to think of it this way – and this is the example he used in the book -  your girlfriend is a top athlete, but you don’t swim that well, so one day you are both in the water swimming and she beats you back to shore but you get water in your mouth, etc but you don’t want to tell her that, and you have an attitude when you return to shore and when she asks you what is wrong, you berate her using the line that she should not have swam that fast, the water was to rough and she could have been hurt, rather than admit that you don’t swim well, you make up false reasons for resenting her swimming abilities.  By the way, Litost is a Czech word – as per authors note.

The theme of these stories are laughing and forgetting. Some characters are laughing hysterically and others don’t want to forget certain things.  However, laughing and forgetting is mainly about Czechoslovakia.  When it was taken over by Russia, old things were replaced with other things so that the old things could be forgotten!   These characters are going through similar occurrences in their day to day lives.

Kundera’s writing is witty, funny, keen and ironic!   His symbolism of people and their struggles and politics and the like are quite perceptive.