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The Joke Paperback - 1998
by Milan Kundera
- Used
- Good
- Paperback
A$13.01
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Details
- Title The Joke
- Author Milan Kundera
- Binding Paperback
- Edition International Ed
- Condition Used - Good
- Pages 323
- Volumes 1
- Language ENG
- Publisher Faber and Faber Limited, London
- Publication date 1998
- Bookseller's Inventory # 1243267439
- ISBN 9780571166930 / 0571166938
- Category Fiction - General
- Dewey Decimal Code FIC
- Quantity available 1
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Reader reviews for The Joke
Review summary
Milan Kundera's debut novel 'The Joke' received significant critical attention for its examination of individual lives caught within Communist Czechoslovakia's ideological machinery. Readers recognized it as a sophisticated exploration of how a casual jest becomes the catalyst for decades of personal anguish and moral corruption. The novel's multiple narrative perspectives—shifting between Ludvik, Helena, Jaroslav, and Kostka—allowed readers to witness the same events from different viewpoints, revealing the gap between intention and consequence. While some found the political backdrop dated, most agreed the work transcended its historical moment to address universal human struggles: the burden of the past, the futility of revenge, and the impossibility of genuine connection within systems that demand conformity. The mathematically precise structure and careful characterization impressed readers familiar with Kundera's later work, establishing this as a remarkably mature first novel that prefigured many of his recurring philosophical concerns.
Readers say this book is:
profound psychologically astute darkly comic philosophically rich elegantly structured emotionally devastating intellectually ambitious cruelly honest melancholic narratively intricateWrite a review for this book
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First line
"SO HERE I WAS, home again after all those years."
