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 that we could
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.
