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 At once a philosophical meditation on duality, an inquiry into the nature of love and desire, and a socio-historical document of Czech dissident activity during the 1960s and 1970s, The Unbearable Lightness of Being is Kundera’s most critically acclaimed work.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 lightness and weight.

The First section, “Lightness and Weight,” begins with an introduction to eternal return (also sometimes called eternal recurrence), a philosophical idea of particular interest to the 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, which states that time repeats itself eternally on an infinitely recurring loop. This idea is often expressed with the German saying einmal ist keinmal (roughly—once is never), meaning that what happens only once might as well not have happened at all. Nietzsche called the possibility of eternal return the “greatest burden,” but posits life as meaningless without it. In contrast with this philosophy, the narrator introduces the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides, who divided the world into pairs of opposites and assigned each a positive or negative value. For Parmenides, weight was negative and lightness positive. The narrator wonders if human life might not be characterized by this lightness. He is yet unsure what to make of Nietzsche and Parmenides, but is moved by the ambiguity of the duality that they suggest and finds the contemplation of this duality fascinating.

The narrator then introduces Tomáš, a Czech surgeon, and tells the story of his relationship with Tereza. The two meet while Tomáš is visiting the provincial town in which Tereza is a waitress. Tereza is drawn to Tomáš because, like her, he is a lover of literature. After he leaves, she travels to Prague to see him. They begin a relationship, but although they are cohabiting, Tomáš is unable to give up his “erotic friendships,” a series of liaisons he has with multiple women other than Tereza. The most prominent of his erotic friendships is with artist Sabina, who, like Tomáš, prefers nontraditional romantic relationships. Tereza is deeply wounded by Tomáš’s affairs, and Tomáš marries her in an attempt to alleviate her anxiety about the nature of their relationship. They adopt a puppy named Karenin, and Tereza forms a friendship of sorts with Sabina.

In 1968, the Russians occupy Czechoslovakia in effort to put an end to the country’s attempts at liberal reforms. Tomáš and Tereza flee to Zurich, where Tomáš is happy, but Tereza struggles to put down roots and is troubled by the continued presence in their lives of Sabina, who has also immigrated to Geneva. Tereza and Karenin return to Prague, and although Tomáš initially feels a lightness in her absence, he is unable to be apart from her and follows her back to Czechoslovakia.

Part Two, titled “Soul and Body,” pauses the narrative and retells it from Tereza’s perspective. Readers learn more about Tereza’s upbringing. Tereza’s father is imprisoned by the Czechoslovak authorities for anti-communist activity, and she grows up in the house of her mother and step1qfather. Her mother is a jealous, controlling woman, and her immodesty mortifies Tereza. Although Tereza is an intelligent young woman, her mother removes her from school and finds her a waitressing job so that she can contribute financially to the family. It is there that Tereza meets Tomáš and, after first visiting him in Prague, returns for good to live with him in the capital.

In Prague, Tereza first works in the darkroom of a local illustrated weekly, a position obtained for her by Sabina, and is then promoted to staff photographer. The Russian invasion gives her an unprecedented opportunity to hone her skills and to document one of the most significant events in recent Czech history. She spends entire days in the streets taking photographs. In Zurich, she is unhappy both with her marriage and with her lack of a professional life. She is haunted by nightmares about Tomáš’s many affairs and, unable to handle his continued relationship with Sabina, she returns to Prague.

Part Three, “Words Misunderstood,” narrates the story of Sabina and her Swiss lover Franz. Although Sabina approaches their relationship with her characteristic lightness, Franz is deeply in love with Sabina. He no longer loves his own wife, Marie Claude, but when he leaves her for Sabina, Sabina realizes that she and Franz ultimately have little in common and understand the world in fundamentally opposing ways. She leaves for Paris, where she receives a letter from Tomáš’s son informing her of Tomáš’s and Tereza’s deaths in a car accident.

Part Four, “Soul and Body,” illustrates the period of repression that followed the 1968 Russian invasion. Tomáš, formerly a surgeon, is forced to work as a window washer, while Tereza is once again a waitress. Each has been punished in their own way for what was perceived as anti-government activity. Because they have opposite schedules, they see each other only on Sundays. Tomáš continues his affairs and Tereza continues to be upset by them. Wanting to better understand Tomáš’s claim that sex and love are not the same experience, she has a brief liaison of her own, with a man whom she meets at the hotel bar where she works and who she finds out may (or may not) be a member of the secret police. She is consumed by worry that she will be denounced.

Part Five, “Lightness and Weight,” further explains how Tomáš came to lose his position at the hospital: He writes a piece in a local paper that compares the Communist regime to the Oedipus myth. The unimaginative party censors interpret his piece literally, thinking that Tomáš meant to suggest that communist party officials gouge out their own eyes. He is pressured to retract his statements, but he will not. He is fired from his job and finds new work washing windows—a substantial demotion, but one that he does not find entirely unpleasant. However, the situation in the capital deteriorates, and Tomáš and Tereza decide to move to the country, where they will be under less governmental scrutiny.

Part Six, “The Grand March,” focuses on Sabina and Franz. Sabina rebels against the communist regime largely through her art, which she sees as a repudiation of “kitsch,” which she defines as the aesthetic of false enthusiasm for communist ideology and forced conformity to the socialist realism that is the only officially approved mode of art under the communist government. Franz travels to Thailand to protest the situation in Cambodia and dies as the result of a violent mugging.

Part Seven, “Karenin’s Smile,” depicts life in the rural village where Tomáš and Tereza move to work on a collective farm. They are happy in the countryside, and Tomáš has finally ceased his affairs. Their dog, Karenin, now aged, gets cancer, and both Tomáš and Tereza are bereft when Tomáš must finally euthanize their beloved companion. Their last few hours are spent at a rural inn dancing with their fellow farmworkers where the two, at last, find a kind of happiness.