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Immortality

Immortality

List Price: $14.00
Your Price: $10.50
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This book is a classic.
Review: Immortality was my introduction to the interesting world views of Milan Kundera. Seldom have I encountered such artistry combined with such genius; such outlandish insights of truth, and such wicked humor, combined with absolutely believable characters both past and present. His subtle philosophies and random commentary tie it all together wonderfully. This book is a most thought provoking act of creation. Read it.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Beautiful
Review: Kundera is definitely one of those authors you have to be in the mood for. Not exactly beach reading. I found this title to be his best and the easiest one to get into. Once you get in the rhythm of things it is absolutely beautiful

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: lose your self....and be satiated.
Review: my copy of this is full of highlight marks....so many epiphany filled quotes that shed light on one's being (human) that even though i am a biased kundera fan, i believe anyone who is not daunted by non-formulaic approaches to novel writing will find this a transcendental bible of epihany and story-relating. (i liken it to Krzysztof Kieslowski and Wim Wenders sort of imagery & character-storytelling)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Intoxicatingly Enchanting- EXCELLENT
Review: Read this book today. Then come back to me and tell me it is rubbish! I bet you, you wont be able to do such a thing. Faultless: from beginning to end. A journey of exqusite taste, storytelling, aspirations and clever insights. A work of genius..

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: An intoxicating read!
Review: Reading a novel by Milan Kundera is a bit like taking a long lunch with your favorite college philosophy professor, and discovering that he's a wonderful storyteller. This particular novel begins with a woman's beautiful but fleeting gesture, and continues by telling us more about her until both the history and the significance of her gesture are revealed in their full, heady, context. On the way, Kundera weaves in stories about Goethe, Napoleon, the origins of sound bites and photo-ops, and of course, musings on immortality. Like many good storytellers, Kundera even presents himself as a minor character in his tale of love, gestures and immortality. By the end of the novel, you will feel intoxicated, as if your long lunch has been accompanied by a number of good glasses of wine. And as you lift your hand to wave goodbye to Kundera, you will realize that your life has been changed, and that you will forever look at the world with a slightly different view for having read this amazing book.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Kundera-esque? Kunderaian? Let's go with Kunderan, shall we?
Review: First of all - don't read this if you haven't read either "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" or "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." "Immortality" is more difficult than both of them and should therefore be read later; but not only that, the allusions to some of Kundera's earlier ideas (the border, the unbearable lightness of being) will missed if you read this first.

Second - how much you put into will be how much you get. Don't read this as a novel; read it as a treasure buried under 350 pages of prose - you'll find many nuggets, but it will take work to grasp them and they won't combine to form a fully-formed unified gold bar.

Third - it's not really about immortality. It's about life, existence, and so on - the essential human themes.

Fourth - it suffers from Kundera's fatal flaw, his refusal to use the literary technique of a book's climax to make the sharpest point. The effect on the reader (and the point of literature, in my opinion, is to make the largest possible effect on the reader) would be much greater if the ending of part five ended the actual novel. I have nothing against Kundera briefly giving away the end in the middle of the novel, which he does in "Being" as well. It's a technique that he uses very well. But how much more so if the characters' ending came at the *book's* ending!

Finally - I'm not sure which rating to give to "Immortality." I first put 4 stars, as it has serious flaws (namely, it doesn't truly form exactly one work and the experimentalism does not always work - put at the climax where it belongs!). But I'd be kidding myself if 20% percent of the books I read are better than "Immortality," I think. I'll end up giving it five, but with caution. It desereves four and a half. I think I hold Kundera to a higher standard - he has such talent; he could use it better.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Classic Metafiction
Review: The chief pleasure of reading Kundera comes from the music of his writing (in this case, translated by Peter Kussi). His sentences are like melodies and, like Nabokov, it is easy to simply get carried along by their flow. He does not write "novels" in the classic sense - he writes "pieces" which have just as much to do with philosophy as creative writing. The journey is all about little insights, philosophical ideas, and musings on history.

I must warn the newcomer, however - this is NOT a straightforward novel. This is a classic example of "metafiction" - that is, writing about writing. The book begins with Kundera seeing a woman's wave which inspires him to write a story. Immortality is that story, PLUS Kundera's writing that story, PLUS random digressions about Goethe and Rubens. I have to impress upon the reader that THERE IS NO PLOT in this book. That is Kundera's point, and yet the absence of a plot does not encourage the reader to keep going back to it (as it is not headed anywhere).

If you are looking for a book that is out of the ordinary, with very poetic philosophical digressions, than this is the novel for you.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: thank you, Kundera!
Review: I typically wish to write reviews of some profundity. here i will just gush my feelings. never in a long long time have i enjoyed every single page in a book. never in a long long time did the last page of a book made me sad this experience is over. this book had to be read to be believed. thank you Milan Kundera. oh, did you gain a fan.


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