i love the unbearable lightness of being so dearly. could you recommend books similar to it? in any aspect? thank you! love your blog
it's a lovely book and I've yet to find one quite like it, but some tangentially related ones (maybe? I’m going almost entirely by mood here so):
A Moth to a Flame by Stig Dagerman (for its examinations of desire and psychological insight; for Dagerman's prose, too, which is some of the most stunningly cool and lucid I've ever come across--I don't quite know what the similarity is between him and Kundera's writing in Being but he was the first I thought of and I think it may have something to do with that clarity)
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel by Ocean Vuong (for its exploration of identity in relation to various aspects, but particularly desire and history; for the notion of the body as text and text as body and the question of how these two palimpsests make and unmake us; for the writing which is just beautiful; a little more philosophical, too, I think, than Dagerman, or at least closer to the way Kundera uses it)
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill (it’s been a while since I read this, but from what I recall I think the themes in regards to relationships & its pitfalls -- struggles of working through love, infidelity, heartbreak and all the grief tied up in it -- are somewhat similar, while being explored from a more personal & intimate angle (in terms of narrative feel, at least) than Being. The writing is beautiful, too, with a similar balance of clarity and meanderings to other topics)
Open Water: A Novel by Caleb Azumah Nelson (for its head-on collision with the mortifying ordeal of being known etc; for the question: what does love and vulnerability look like, when the world has constantly denied you a right to it? if you were drawn most to the issue of conflict within relationships, or felt more for Tereza then I think this moves in a similar vein, albeit from a different direction.)
And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos by John Berger (this may be hit or miss, but if you like the philosophical aspect then this may be worth a read--I think it might be the most abstract of Berger’s work but there are a lot of things he examines here that I think echo Being a little: sexuality and desire, love, death, responsibility and ethics, the simultaneous magnitude and transience of our lives and what, in light of this, we are to do with them--how we are to approach them in relation to the world, and the brutal history of it, that we inherit)
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories by Raymond Carver (for explorations on the fallibility of humans in love and all the limitations, hurt, and aftershocks therein; style is very different to Kundera but the subject matter is quite close)
The Carpenter’s Pencil by Manuel Rivas (much, much more light-hearted than Being in case you want to try something smaller and less sombre; like Berger it may be hit or miss, but it is a more hopeful examination of love through the impossibilities of war and the inescapable brunt of history)
Additionally, you may also want to try Difficult Loves by Italo Calvino, or Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar if you’re feeling incredibly ambitious and don’t mind dedicating the God-only-knows-how-many hours to reading and possibly rereading it. You can also delve into some of Kundera’s other novels; I’ve only read Slowness, Life is Elsewhere and The Joke and am not sure how closely I would place them with Being, but I have heard The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is supposed to be his best and better than Being itself so it’s the one that’s next on my list. Hope some of these provide at least something for you, anon x
