SOURCE: “Fiction in Review,” in Yale Review, Vol. 74, No. 2, January, 1985, pp. xxi-xxiii.

In the following review, Howard describes The Unbearable Lightness of Being as a “superb novel, an important work of fiction.”

In the first sentence of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera presents us with Nietzsche's “mad myth” of eternal return, the heaviness of responsibility that lies on us if history, personal and public, recurs ad infinitum. This idea is opposed to the transitory nature of life as we experience it, which reduces responsibility: “For how can we condemn something that is ephemeral, in transit? In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.”

This superb novel, an important work of fiction, is launched with theory, but fear not—whoever the narrator may be, he's an entertaining fellow, sophisticated, professional, very European, not daunted by large issues. Following this...