Life Is Elsewhere
On Sale: 07/25/2000
Life Is Elsewhere
On Sale: 07/25/2000
Format:
About the Book
"I will say no more about this lacerating book except to urge it upon all who care about literature in our difficult era." — Boston Globe
"A sly and merciless lampoon of revolutionary romanticism. . . Kundera commits some of the funniest literary savaging since Evelyn Waugh polished off Dickens in A Handful of Dust."— Time
Milan Kundera initially intended to call this novel The Lyrical Age. The lyrical age, according to him, is youth, and this novel, above all, is an epic of adolescence; an ironic epic that tenderly erodes sacrosanct values: childhood, motherhood, revolution, and even poetry.
Jaromil is in fact a poet. His mother made him a poet and accompanies him (figuratively) to his love bed and (literally) to his deathbed. A ridiculous and touching character, horrifying and totally innocent ("innocence with its bloody smile"!), Jaromil is at the same time a true poet. He's no creep, he's Rimbaud. Rimbaud entrapped by the communist revolution, entrapped in a somber farce.
Critical Praise
"I will say no more about this lacerating book except to urge it upon all who care about literature in our difficult era." — Boston Globe
"Tender and unsparing. . . Life Is Elsewhere is a remarkable portrait of an artist as a young man." — Newsweek
"A sly and merciless lampoon of revolutionary romanticism...Kundera commits some of the funniest literary savaging since Evelyn Waugh polished off Dickens in A Handful of Dust." — Time
"Brilliant." — Sunday Times (London)
-Product Details
- ISBN: 9780060997021
- ISBN 10: 0060997028
- Imprint: Harper Perennial
- On Sale: 07/25/2000
- Pages: 432
- List Price:21.99 CAD
- BISAC1 : FICTION / Coming of Age
- BISAC2 : FICTION / World Literature / Czech Republic
- BISAC3 : FICTION / Literary
- BISAC4 : FICTION / Psychological