Title: Valčík na rozloučenou
First published: 1976
Description: In this dark farce of a novel, set in an old-fashioned Central European spa town, eight characters are swept up in an accelerating dance: 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 unillusioned former political prisoner about to leave his country and his young woman ward.

Perhaps the most brilliantly plotted and sheerly entertaining of Milan Kundera's novels, 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.

Written in Bohemia in 1969-70, this 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 new translation, made from the French text prepared by the novelist himself, fully reflects his own tone and intentions. As such it offers an opportunity for both the discovery and the rediscovery of one of the very best of a great writer's work.
Subjects: Health resorts, Fiction, Continental european fiction (fictional works by one author), Fiction, general, Fiction, erotica, general, Badeort, Liebesbeziehung, Czech fiction, Translations into English, English fiction, Translations from Czech, Social life and customs, Novela checa, Manners and customs, Czech republic, fiction
Places: Central Europe, Czechoslovakia
LC classification: PG5039.21.U6 V313 1998