One can see the already acknowledged influence of Cervantes, Diderot, and Sterne (whose Tristram Shandy [1759-1767], surely anticipates some of the technical departures here.) The presence of Kafka, as literary innovator, and as comic genius (a reading of Kafka which may only now, with the opening of Prague, be possible) stands as well in the line of direct influence.

Most of all, Kundera's own The Unbearable Lightness of Being surely "precedes" Immortality in an important way, and perhaps should be read in conjunction with it, in that questions common to both texts will thereby stand in clearer relief.