"I can't imagine reading this book without being challenged and instructed, amused, amazed and aroused, and ultimately delighted." --John Simon, New York Times Book Review
Milan Kundera's brilliant collection of essays is a passionate defense of art in an era that, he argues, no longer values art or beauty. With the same dazzling mix of emotion and ideas that characterizes his bestselling novels, the internationally acclaimed author revisits the artists whose works help us better understand what it means to be human. Elegant, startlingly original, and provocative, Encounter combines many of the author's signature themes with personal reflections and stories.
In this masterwork of cultural criticism, Kundera explores:
- The Art of the Novel: Profound meditations on the works of luminaries like Rabelais, Dostoyevsky, and Malaparte, exploring what this essential art form reveals about the human condition.
- Modern Art and Music: A painter's brutal gesture in the works of Francis Bacon, the shocking modernity of Janáček, and the tragedy of forgetting Schoenberg.
- European Literature: Sharp, illuminating encounters with the worlds of Anatole France, Céline, and the poetry of the Antilles.
- Exile and Memory: The author's deeply personal lens on the nature of exile, the battlefield of memory, and the unbreakable bonds of friendship across political divides.
About the Author :
The Franco-Czech novelist Milan Kundera (1929-2023) was born in Brno and lived in France, his second homeland, since 1975 until his death. He is the author of the novels The Joke, Life Is Elsewhere, Farewell Waltz, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Immortality, and the short story collection Laughable Loves--all originally in Czech. His more recent novels, Slowness, Identity, Ignorance, and The Festival of Insignificance, as well as his nonfiction works, The Art of the Novel, Testaments Betrayed, The Curtain, and Encounter, were originally written in French.
Review :
"Cultivated, worldly, charming and spirited...Kundera's values are sane and humane; his impulses generous; his taste, overall, unimpeachable." - Phillip Lopate, San Francisco Chronicle
"Deeply personal and warmly inviting...Encounter serves as a call to arms for a culture on the verge of losing its artistic credibility." - Time Out New York
"A remarkable collection that showcases the author's diverse interests and sparkling talent...Kundera looks at the way exile and estrangement impact upon art and creation." - New York Journal of Books
"I can't imagine reading this book without being challenged and instructed, amused, amazed and aroused, and ultimately delighted." - John Simon, New York Times Book Review
"Compelling essays." - Boston Sunday Globe
"A commanding, compelling collection. . . . Kundera's essays express enduring aesthetic loyalties and provide unexpected aesthetic sparks that remind readers of a fuller range of authentic thought and feeling." - Michael S. Roth, Los Angeles Times
