Title: La Fête de l'insignifiance
Description: Casting light on the most serious of problems and at the same time saying not one serious sentence; being fascinated by the reality of the contemporary world and at the same time completely avoiding realism--that's *The Festival of Insignificance*. Readers who know Kundera's earlier books know that the wish to incorporate an element of the "unserious" in a novel is not at all unexpected of him. In *Immortality*, Goethe and Hemingway stroll through several chapters together, talking and laughing. And in *Slowness*, Vera, the author's wife, says to her husband, "You've often told me you meant to write a book one day that would have not a single serious word in it . . . I warn you: watch out. Your enemies are lying in wait."

Now, far from watching out, Kundera is finally and fully realizing his old aesthetic dream in this novel, which we may easily view as a summation of his whole work. A strange sort of summation. Strange sort of epilogue. Strange sort of laughter, inspired by our time, which is comical because it has lost all sense of humor. What more can we say? Nothing. Just read.
Subjects: Philosophy, Friendship, City and town life, Fiction, Social life and customs, Manners and customs, FICTION / General, FICTION / Literary, Continental european fiction (fictional works by one author), Paris (france), fiction, Friendship, fiction, Male friendship, Fiction, general, Amistad, Novela, Hombres, Vida social y costumbres
Places: Paris, Jardin du Luxembourg (Paris, France), France, Paris (France), Francés, París (Francia), Jardin du Luxembourg
People: Joseph Stalin (1879-1953)