Overview
āWe should welcome the context Kundera gives for the struggles between Russia and Europe, and the plight of those caught between them. His defense of small languages, small cultures, and small nations feels pressing.āāClaire Messud,Ā Harper's Magazine
āKundera focuses on the relationship of Europeās central āsmall nationsā like Czechoslovakia and Ukraine to Western culture and argues that their cultural identities were increasingly threatened.āāNew York Book ReviewĀ
A short collection of brilliant early essays that offers a fascinating context for Milan Kunderaās subsequent career and holds a mirror to much recent European history.Ā Ā It is also remarkably prescient with regard to Russiaās current aggression in Ukraine and its threat to the rest of Europe.
Milan Kunderaās early nonfiction work feels especially resonant in our own time. In these pieces, Kundera pleads the case of the āsmall nationsā of Europe who, by culture, are Western with deep roots in Europe, despite Russia imposing its own Communist political regimes in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ukraine, and elsewhere. Kundera warns that the real tragedy here is not Russia but Europe, whose own identity and culture are directly challenged and threatened in a way that could lead to their destruction. He is sounding the alarm, which chimes loud and clear in our own twenty-first century.
The 1983 essay translated by Edmund White (āThe Tragedy of Central Europeā), and the 1967 lecture delivered to the Czech Writersā Union in the middle of the Prague Spring by the young Milan Kundera (āLiterature and the Small Nationsā), translated for the first time by Linda Asher, are both written in a voice that is at once personal, vehement, and anguished. Here, Kundera appears already as one of our great European writers and truly our contemporary.Ā Each piece is prefaced by a short presentation by French historian Pierre Nora and Czech-born French political scientist Jacques Rupnik.
This book title, A Kidnapped West (The Tragedy of Central Europe), ISBN: 9780063272965, by Milan Kundera, Linda Asher, published by HarperCollins (October 8, 2024) is available in paperback. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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