A series of linked short stories. Stories about troubled relationships and lonely characters, against the backdrop of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia.
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Czech: Kniha smíchu a zapomnění) is a novel by Milan Kundera, published in France in 1979. It is composed of seven separate narratives united by some common themes. The book considers the nature of forgetting as it occurs in history, politics and life in general. The stories also contain elements found in the genre of magic realism.
The first time an angel heard the devil's laughter, he was dumbfounded... The angel clearly understood that such laughter was directed against God and against the dignity of his works. He knew that he must reach swiftly somehow, but felt weak and defenceless. (p86)
One morning (and it will be soon), when everyone wakes up as a writer, the age of universal deafness and incomprehension will have arrived. (p147)
You begin to liquidate a people, Hubl said, by taking away its memory. You destroy its books, its culture, its history (p218)
Whoever wishes to remember must not stay in one place, waiting for the memories to come of their own accord! Memories are scattered all over the immense world, and it takes voyaging to find them and make them leave their refuge. (p229)
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