WULOLIFE
The Joke Author: Milan Kundera Publisher: Shanghai Translation Publishing House
The Joke Author: Milan Kundera Publisher: Shanghai Translation Publishing House
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Description
Introduction · · · · · ·
* Kundera's first novel
* A life farce that started as a joke and ended up as a laxative
* “I don’t like laughing very much. I prefer making others laugh rather than laughing.”
The book comes with a customized Milan Kundera themed sticker
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Young student Ludvik was expelled from the party and sent to the mines to do hard labor because he wrote a few jokes on a postcard he sent to a friend. During his service, he fell in love with an honest and steady girl, Lucy, and regarded her as the guide to his dark life. However, Lucy showed strong rejection and resistance to the further development of their relationship, which angered Ludvik who was unaware of the inside story. In the end, Ludvik slapped Lucy out of his life. Fifteen years later, Ludvik, who was freed, returned to his hometown and met Lucy, who became a barber, but Lucy no longer recognized him. In order to avenge Zemanek, who insisted on expelling him from the party, Ludvik designed to seduce his wife Elena, but then learned that Elena's marriage to her husband had long been in name only...
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After it was published in Czechoslovakia, The Joke sold 117,000 copies in a few months, which is a considerable number for a country with a population of less than 15 million. It was also a great success when it was published in France, and Kundera's status as a writer was established.
Kundera once explained the title of the book in an interview with French television in 1968: "The Joke, it is a specific joke - postcard - but also refers to the tragic and ridiculous nature of history. We have experienced a huge joke of history. I always think that I have written a love novel. Unfortunately, especially abroad, this book is regarded as a political novel. This is completely wrong. Of course, this kind of love is determined by historical conditions, and in my opinion, the situation at that time was unique and unprecedented, and these historical conditions raised new problems."
About the Author
Milan Kundera (1929- )
Novelist, born in Brno, Czechoslovakia; lived in France since 1975.
The novels "The Joke", "Life is Abroad", "A Farewell Waltz", "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting", "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and "Immortality", as well as the short story collection "Funny Love", were originally written in Czech.
The novels Slowness, Identity and Ignorance, the essays The Art of the Novel, The Testament Betrayed, Curtain and Encounter, and the latest novel Celebrating Meaninglessness, originally written in French.
"Jacques and His Master" is the author's representative drama.
Cai Ruoming (1943- )
In 1965, he graduated from the Department of Western Languages and Literature of Peking University with a major in French. In 1978, he passed the examination of the Ministry of Education and went to France to study at public expense. After returning to China in 1980, he served as the director of the French Teaching and Research Section, the director of the Western European Languages Department, and the tutor of master's students at Beijing International Studies University. After 1993, he served as a visiting professor and representative in China at the University of Angers, France; he also served as an important position in the Overseas Chinese Education Foundation in France, the China and Loire Valley Association, and the executive vice president of the French branch of the Western Returned Scholars Association.
