The JOKE
Korean Title: 농담
Author: Milan Kundera
Translator: Mikyong Pang
Publisher: Minumsa
432 pages.
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| >>>This book is written in Korean. |
About This Book
The debut novel of the world-renowned Czech writer Milan Kundera, The Joke is a representative work that reveals the ideological roots of Kundera’s literature. Alongside themes of love between men and women and political criticism, it simultaneously pursues aesthetic and historical dimensions. In this novel, Kundera begins with the trivial aspects of private life-love, friendship, hatred, and revenge-and suggests that even ideologies born of good intentions can produce results contrary to their aims, thereby warning against absolute belief and uniformity. He demonstrates how absolute conviction can thoroughly destroy an individual human life.
The Joke employs a distinctive narrative structure of its own. Ludvík, the central character, serves as the narrator in Parts 1, 3, 5, and 7; Helena narrates Parts 2 and 7; Jaroslav Parts 4 and 7; and Kostka Part 6. Notably, in Part 7, the narratives of three characters intersect, shifting like scenes in a film. Through the interweaving of each character’s monologues as perceived through the reader’s perspective, the novel illuminates their lives as a whole.
In today’s age of self-reflection, The Joke presents itself both as the question posed by an intellectual longing for freedom to the historical and political circumstances surrounding him, and as an embodiment of the contemporary spirit of an age that has moved beyond ideology.
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