Name: Immortality
ISBN: 9780571144563

Milan Kundera

A modern classic, "Immortality" is "ingenious, witty, provocative, and formidably intelligent, both a pleasure and a challenge to the reader" ("Washington Post Book World").

Immortality

Elke Maasbommel

Obada Mu

Über allen Gipfeln 
Ist Ruh
In allen Wipfeln 
Spürest Du
Kaum einen Hauch
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde
Warte nur! Balde
Ruhest du auch.

Emily Morgan

Kundera is always a long read for me, always interspersed chapters in different coffee shops, passing time on random trains or early mornings while my tea brews. I read this book during the part of the year I always forget – the middle months where everything seems to blur and meld together. Actually, I read somewhere that Kundera writes books you often forget – there's a certain immemorability of the plot, of the characters themselves. Not necessarily in a bad way. They just don't seem to be the focus of the book. What you're left with, rather, is a subtle feeling of things having shifted. Whenever I'm stuck I always find something new in his words – a way of looking at identity, an illumination of certain relationships, a new conception of literature itself. 

There's a chapter in this book where Kundera sits down to have lunch with one of the characters, and they discuss his motivations and what is to come next; "A novel shouldn't be like a bicycle race but a feast of many courses. I am really looking forward to Part 6. A completely new character will enter the novel. At the end of that part he will disappear without a trace. He causes nothing and leaves no effects." At the end of the day, I'm a sucker for anything meta.

“In our world, where there are more and more faces, more and more alike, it is difficult for an individual to reinforce the originality of the self and to become convinced of its inimitable uniqueness. There are two methods for cultivating the uniqueness of the self: the method of addition and the method of subtraction. Agnes subtracts from her self everything that is exterior and borrowed, in order to come closer to her sheer essence (even with the risk that zero lurks at the bottom of the subtraction). Laura’s method is precisely the opposite: in order to make her self ever more visible, perceivable, seizable, sizeable, she keeps adding to it more and more attributes and she attempts to identify herself with them (with the risk that the essence of the self may be buried by the additional attributes).”

Hazel Evans

A book described in the blurb as one that "attempts to work out the meaning of life" is not one I expect to be gripped to from start to finish. Kundera, once again, defies this preconception with his amusing and intricate tales that touch you more than any extended essay would. You find yourself identifying with not only each and every one of the characters, but also with Kundera himself, who plays, in his own novel, the part of an omniscient, self-proclaimed God. I find myself wondering not only about the intricacies of life, but the working of Kundera's mind; how does he come up with such ideas, how is he able to document anything in this clever and amusing way? Immortality is poignant, amusing, intelligent and gripping. And I read it on a beach holiday, so there.