The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts

A work of literary analysis by the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Though originally born in Czechoslovakia, Kundera has lived in France since 1975, and his more recent novels are written in French. In this thought-provoking, endlessly enlightening, and entertaining essay on the art of the novel, renowned author Milan Kundera suggests that 'the curtain' represents a ready-made perception of the world that each of us has — a pre-interpreted world. The job of the novelist, he argues, is to rip through the curtain and reveal what it hides. Here an incomparable literary artist cleverly sketches out his personal view of the history and value of the novel in Western civilization. In doing so, he celebrates a prose form that possesses the unique ability to transcend national and language boundaries in order to reveal some previously unknown aspect of human existence.