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Life Is Elsewhere

Audiobook

"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.


Expand title description text
Publisher: HarperAudio Edition: Unabridged

OverDrive Listen audiobook

  • ISBN: 9780062215604
  • File size: 297783 KB
  • Release date: August 21, 2012
  • Duration: 10:20:22

MP3 audiobook

  • ISBN: 9780062215604
  • File size: 297818 KB
  • Release date: August 21, 2012
  • Duration: 10:24:22
  • Number of parts: 9

Formats

OverDrive Listen audiobook
MP3 audiobook

subjects

Fiction Literature

Languages

English

"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.


Expand title description text