Life is Elsewhere

✍ Scribed by Kundera, Milan

• Book ID: 107338161
• Year: 1973
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 244 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN: 0060997028

✦ Synopsis

The author initially intended to call this novel The Lyrical Age. The lyrical age, according to Kundera, is youth, and this novel, above all, is an epic of adolescence; an ironic epic that tenderly erodes sacrosanct values: childhood, motherhood, revolution, and even poetry. Jaromil is in fact a poet. His mother made him a poet and accompanies him (figuratively) to his love bed and (literally) to his deathbed. A ridiculous and touching character, horrifying and totally innocent ("innocence with its bloody smile"!), Jaromil is at the same time a true poet. He's no creep, he's Rimbaud. Rimbaud entrapped by the communist revolution, entrapped in a somber farce.

Review

"Tender and unsparing...Life Is Elsewhere is a remarkable portrait of an artist as a young man." -- *--*Newsweek

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French, Czech