THE FAREWELL PARTY

by Milan Kundera ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 7, 1976

A Czech novelist at odds with his Communist-run country and also--like most comic writers--with the human condition, Kundera is already known in the West through two earlier novels, The Joke and Life is Elsewhere, and a story collection, Laughable Loves. His locale this time is a Czech fertility spa and his target the unsatisfactoriness of love, politics, and scientific advance, all of which seem to promise more than they deliver. The spa is run by a doctor who impregnates his patients from a sperm bank of which he is the sole depositor, so that many of the local children look just like him. One of his nurses is with child by a jazz trumpeter who wants her to get an abortion because he loves his wife--in fact he strays for the pleasure of returning to her. Occupying a choice suite is an American millionaire who distributes biblical wisdom and silver coins and heals the psyche of the nurse with a night of love. A darker figure is Jakub, embittered by his country's recent political history, who has been granted permission to leave Czechoslovakia and stops off at the spa to say farewell. To him, King Herod was a hero, and the slaughter of the innocents a wise attempt to end the human race. Kafka and Nathanael West were in at Kundera's christening, but he is also his own man. Farewell is for those who like their Pilsner laced with wormwood.

Pub Date: Sept. 7, 1976

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1976

Categories: FICTION