Het Boek van De Lach en De Vergetelheid
Title
Het Boek van De Lach en De Vergetelheid
Description
Tamina is beautiful, thirty-three years old, and she is from Prague.
She lives in a Western European provincial town, where she works as a waitress. Tamina is a good listener, but is she really listening? The customers she brings coffee and calvados to speak out - but she desperately fights the memory of her dead husband.
She tries to track down the diary she left behind in Prague - in the hopes of regaining insight into her husband, their married life and her past. In the end, her journey takes her to an island where children rule. There she will swim to her eternal freedom.
Kundera describes how everything is affected by the 'haze' of forgetting: how little remains of those we have loved. He also shows the tragedy of the Eastern European emigrants (of whom Kundera is one). And finally, he draws the tragedy of Czechoslovakia, where the Prague Spring was nipped in the bud and where the army and party are now doing their best to make the people forget their past.
She lives in a Western European provincial town, where she works as a waitress. Tamina is a good listener, but is she really listening? The customers she brings coffee and calvados to speak out - but she desperately fights the memory of her dead husband.
She tries to track down the diary she left behind in Prague - in the hopes of regaining insight into her husband, their married life and her past. In the end, her journey takes her to an island where children rule. There she will swim to her eternal freedom.
Kundera describes how everything is affected by the 'haze' of forgetting: how little remains of those we have loved. He also shows the tragedy of the Eastern European emigrants (of whom Kundera is one). And finally, he draws the tragedy of Czechoslovakia, where the Prague Spring was nipped in the bud and where the army and party are now doing their best to make the people forget their past.
Creator
Milan Kundera
Publisher
Agathon and Ambo
Date
1981
Format
Book
Language
Dutch
Identifier
NOV 02
Files
Collection
Citation
Milan Kundera, “Het Boek van De Lach en De Vergetelheid,” WPB, accessed April 28, 2024, https://tpb.worm.org/items/show/14076.