Immortality (novel)
Immortality (Czech: Nesmrtelnost) is a novel in seven parts, written by Milan Kundera in 1988 in Czech. First published 1990 in French. English edition 345 p., translation by Peter Kussi.[1] This novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman, seemingly to her swimming instructor. Immortality is the last of a trilogy that includes The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
 First English edition (publ. Grove Weidenfeld) | |
| Author | Milan Kundera |
|---|---|
| Original title | Nesmrtelnost |
| Translator | Peter Kussi |
| Country | Czech Republic |
Publication date | 1988 |
Published in English | 1991 |
| Pages | 358 |
Plot
Divided into seven parts, Immortality centers on Agnes, her husband Paul and her sister Laura. Part One: the Face establishes these characters. Part Two: Immortality depicts Goethe's fraught relationship with Bettina, a young woman who aspires to create a place for herself in the pantheon of history by controlling Goethe's legacy after his death. Part Three: Agnes and Laura fight, while focusing on the deteriorating state of Laura's relationship with Bernard Bertrand. Part Four: Homo Sentimentalis chronicles Goethe's afterlife and postmortem friendship with Ernest Hemingway. Part Five: Chance sees Agnes' death, and intersects these fictional events with Kundera's seemingly autobiographical account of a conversation with Professor Avenarius. Part Six: the Dial introduces a new character, Rubens, who had an affair with Agnes years prior to the onset of the main events in the plot. Part Seven: the Celebration concludes the novel in the same health club where Kundera first observed the inspirational wave gesture.
References
- "Novel Re-examined In a Novel by Kundera". Retrieved 2010-01-09.