num_pages: 278
description: "After Farewell Waltz there cannot be any doubt. Kundera is a master of contemporary literature. This novel is both an an example of virtuosity and a descent into the human soul." — L'Unite Set in an old-fashioned Central European spa town,  Farewell Waltz  poses the most serious questions with a blasphemous lightness that makes us see that the modern world has deprived us even of the right to tragedy. In this dark farce of a novel, eight characters are swept up in an accelerating a pretty nurse and her repairman boyfriend; an oddball gynecologist; a rich American (at once saint and Don Juan); a popular trumpeter and his beautiful, obsessively jealous wife; and an disillusioned former political prisoner about to leave his country and his young woman ward. It is perhaps the most brilliantly plotted and sheer entertaining of Milan Kundera's novels. Written in Bohemia in 1969-70, the book was first published (in 1976) in France under the title  La valse aux adieux  ( Farewell Waltz ), and later in thirty-four other countries. This beautiful translation, made from the French text prepared by the novelist himself, fully reflects Kundera's own tone and intentions, and offers an opportunity for both the discovery and the rediscovery of one of the very best of a great writer's works.
language: English
title: Farewell Waltz
titlecomplete: Farewell Waltz
characters: Skreta, Kalima, Ruzena, Jakub, Klima
genres: Classics, Roman, France, European Literature, Novels, 20th Century, Literature, Contemporary, Fiction, Czech Literature
ratings_count: 16455
publisher: Harper Perennial