The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a novel by Czech author Milan Kundera. Written in 1982, it first appeared in print in its French translation in 1984. It was published in Czechoslovakia in 1986. The novel describes Czechoslovakia’s Prague Spring, the 1968 Russian invasion, and its resulting “Normalizace” (Normalization) Period, a time of increased repression and persecution of Czech and Slovak intellectuals. At once a philosophical meditation on duality, an inquiry into the nature of love and desire, and a socio-historical document of Czech dissident activity during the 1960s and 1970s, The Unbearable Lightness of Being is Kundera’s most critically acclaimed work. Kundera has published novels, short stories, essays, poetry, plays, and articles and has been the recipient of many awards, including the French Prix Médicis in 1973, the Harder Prize in 2000, the Czech State Literature Prize in 2007, and the Franz Kafka Prize in 2020.

This guide uses the 1999 Perennial Classics edition from HarperCollins, translated by Michael Henry Heim.

Plot Summary

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is set against the backdrop of the Prague Spring and depicts the lives of characters Tomáš, Tereza, Sabina, and Franz. It is told in seven nonlinear parts, beginning with a philosophical discussion of Nietzsche’s concept of eternal return and Parmenides’s distinction between

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