Rating: 
Summary: Rich in ideas on human sensitivity and psychology
Review: "Ignorance" is a very dense work in terms of all the ideas it raises, despite it being short. It is primarily a tale of homecoming after the many years of silent absence of those who fled the Communist regime in Czechoslavia. More than that, the work raises the fundamental question of where home actually is after many years of being away from your birthland. Kundera beautifully captures the difference in perception between the departed and those he or she left behind. For those left behind, the person coming back is the one they knew long ago, hence the lack of questions, but the mere choice of the language in which Kundera chose to write this novel - French - symbolises how much he, the author,and the characters through him, have absorbed the French culture. His identity has evolved far beyond their perception of it. There is one key scene in the novel when a moment of passion occurs between the two key characters. I believe it is very important to recognise that the height of this intimacy takes place in Czech and in the homeland, with a man the heroine of the novel had always dreamed of. She uses words she has neither heard nor uttered for years, for no one would have truly understood their impact in France. The passion and the strength in the vulgarity of her words seem to express her violent need communicate in her mother tongue with someone who truly understands in all senses of the term. These two characters are drawn to one another by their mutual departure, mutual return, mutual language and what one believes to be a mutual memory. One realises by the end of the work that memory is never quite mutual. Whilst I found the start of the novel weak, I was quickly reassured and as absorbed by Kundera's power of perception as ever.
Rating: 
Summary: A great investigation on memory
Review: "We don't understand a thing about human life if we persist in avoiding the most obvious fact: that a reality no longer is what it was when it was; it cannot be reconstructed." What the past left behind is, however, our memory of it - inifintesimal instances of scences, selected sometimes according to our perceived importance and values; sometimes according to unknown reasons. The scary fact is that because of the selective nature of memory, each person in a relationship might possibly has a different set of scenes in our head, threaded together by our own sets of logical arugements, thus creating our own and probably different memory of the same relationship. Milan Kundera illustrated the cruelty of such a human deficiency on memory through two main characters, a man and a woman who are both Czeah emigrates. They met when they returned to their homeland after the Communist regime had collasped. The asymmetry of their memories about their homeland and about other past relatioships created a lot of heartbreaks of the people involved. A wonderful and thorough investigation on its subject, with the simplicity and elegance of his prose - this is one of the best novels I have ever read!
Rating:
Summary: good, just not great
Review: a good book compared to what else is out there, but nothing as amazing or unique as some of his other novels. If you like Kundera, then read this book, if you haven't read any of his other books, avoid this one and read Unbearable Lightness of Being first. He touches on some of the themes that run throughtout all of his books in this book, but the focus of this book is on returning to one's homeland, one's past, and leaving it behind. As somebody who has experienced this, I can see first hand much of what he is talking about in this book, but then again, Kundera also has experienced this, and it seems as if he is talking about issues straight out of his own experiences. I gave it 4 stars because, even though I was expecting a bit more, Kundera is the sort of writer that is above most others who are publishing today.
Rating:
Summary: The Great Return
Review: A rock-solid return to form: audacious and melancholy; humorous and beautiful.
Rating:
Summary: Thought Provoking
Review: After some thought, I find it difficult to identify any new theme in this novel not already explored in some fashion in a previous Kundera novel. Nonetheless, the themes are so rich that it was well worth the time to explore them again. The first theme: how does one find an identity when an insufficient memory is the main vehicle? And if identity is hard to establish, how about the dicier connection between two individuals? In some respects, it is easier, because each friend supplies his own version of the connection, but the risk is that the difference in perception is significant enough to prevent a true friendship. The second theme: how can political events of the Czech Republic provide the impetus to force the relevance of these identity questions. In Ignorance, it is the time spent apart because of exile that provides various opportunities to see the memory loss -- when compatriots go separate ways and then reunite, what is reunited? Kundera continues to brilliantly weave direct points with thematic demonstration ... directly, for example, by pointing out the mathematical ratio of memory to actual life and indirectly in the awkward moments between long separated family, friends, and lovers. As with nearly all his work, his ideas are clear and challenging. I highly recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: Bland by any other name ...
Review: Are we blind to bland because Kundera's name is attached to it? Large margins and type and a fat price tag might not be for critics to contend with, but most of us are also buyers. 'Ignorance' is short but far from pithy-one chapter in the 'Unbearable Lightness of Being' outweighs the entire novella. And please don't mention an exquisite accomplishment like the 'Old Man and the Sea' in comparison with 'Igorance'-'The Old Man and the Sea is a masterpiece of pure storytelling, pure showing, creating the tiny vacuum between reader and text that beautifully draws out the reader's understanding; Ignorance is pure telling with nothing like trenchancy at its conclusion-Kundera ran out of typewriter ribbon maybe. Using French as an excuse for his boring prose is inexcusable-I don't care what language he writes in, I read it in English. Nor do I want to read Kundera's essays in order to understand the work or to enjoy it; the work must stand on its own without commentary from Kundera or anyone else-THAT is judging a book on its own terms rather than digging up excuses for why this book is so watery and airy it should have been titled Forgettable-almost as soon as you put it down. What it fails to do is what any good book by Gabriel Marquez, Paul West, William Gass never fail to do-create a world. And transport the reader to that world. Like the atom, Ignorance is mostly empty space (without even a few electrons whizzing by to liven things up). It is slow, it has no identity, it is best ignored.
Rating:
Summary: All Communism countries are alike
Review: China and Czech have nothing in common culturally except that both are or were under same Communism Regime. But the story is so surprisingly similar to the people in both countries. It is unbelievable!
Rating: 
Summary: Sorry for such a low rating
Review: I am truly sorry for having given such a low rating for this book. But my conscience didn't allow me to give a rating higher than 2 stars. Having gone through 2/3 of the book, I decided that I should not continue my reading. This book did not bring me the excitement I had when I was reading his other magnum opus. This book is about the return of two Czech emigre and what these two people, certainly a man and a woman, encounter on their native land. Kundera, as usually, mixes eroticism in his work. He also employs his usual way of constructing stories: writing about how each of the main characters thinks and feels in each one's own perspectives. But written in French, this book doesn't have the brilliance of his other books...I don't think he truly masters French as well as his own language.
Rating:
Summary: Return of the exile,
Review: I had forgotten how good Kundera is. I read his early novels years ago and loved them, but I somehow forgot what a master he is. This book speaks to all exiles, and I mean by that all who have moved away from their roots to somewhere else for whatever reason. Those who stay behind have less and less in common with the person who returns. I can feel resonances despite living only sixty miles from where I grew up. He is particularly good on the selectivity of memory. Did I leave because I wanted to escape or because of some other reason I now mis-remember ?
Rating:
Summary: Intelligent and unique but probably not for a wide audience
Review: I read this book at the recommendation of my father, who immigrated to the U.S. from Hungary in the 1960s. He told me that it expressed what he felt when he paid his old home a visit a few years ago. I appreciated the author's words regarding the returning Czech immigrants in the book. They return home to a country that is much changed from what they remember. At least one of them realizes that he's been missing a country that no longer exists. Even his native language has come to sound strange to his ears. The reactions of other people in the book were interesting too - no one in the home country asks their returning friends or relatives about their lives in their adopted countries. I remember that same kind of strange silence when I visited Hungary with my family. The author's words ring extremely true. This isn't the type of book I normally read and I appreciated learning from the author's point of view. I had trouble distinguishing between his characters, though. They are not fleshed out, and the plot is slight. It's a book more about the feelings and observations of an emigrant/immigrant. That's very valuable, but I suspect the audience for the work is small. I definitely recommend the book.
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