Bypassing the question of whether you can ever go home again, Milan Kundera's Ignorance tackles instead what happens when you actually get there. Ignorance is the story of two Czechs who meet by chance while traveling back to their homeland after 20 years in exile. Irena, who fled the country in 1968 with her now-deceased husband Martin, returns to Prague only to find coldness and indifference on the part of her former friends. Josef, who emigrated after the Russian invasion, is back in Prague to fulfill a wish of his beloved late wife. As fate would have it, the two have met before in their former lives, and the before-skirted passionate encounter is now destined to transpire. However, as in the story of Odysseus, which this novel so deliberately parallels, every homecoming brings with it a conflicting set of emotions so powerful that one has to question whether the voyage is really worth the pain. Expertly tackling the philosophical and emotional themes of nostalgia, memory, love, loss, and endurance, Kundera continues to astound readers with his masterful ability to understand and articulate issues so central to the human condition.
KUNDERA MILAN
Milan Kundera, nacido en Brno, Checoslovaquia, era estudiante cuando se instauró el régimen comunista checo en 1948 y posteriormente trabajó como obrero, músico de jazz y profesor en el Instituto de Estudios Cinematográficos Avanzados de Praga. Tras la invasión rusa de agosto de 1968, sus libros fueron prohibidos. En 1975, él y su esposa se establecieron en Francia, y en 1981 obtuvo la nacionalidad francesa. Es autor de las novelas La broma, La vida está en otra parte, Vals de despedida, El libro de la risa y el olvido, La insoportable levedad del ser e Inmortalidad, así como del libro de relatos Amores risibles, todas ellas escritas originalmente en checo. Sus novelas más recientes, Lentitud, Identidad e Ignorancia, así como sus obras de no ficción El arte de la novela y Testamentos traicionados, fueron escritas originalmente en francés.
