Milan Kundera
L'identità

“L’Identité” is the twelfth book by the Chechen writer naturalized French. And so it is the incommunicability that once again makes its way into his imagination, through the evocation of suggestive places like the Normandy coast; as well as through couple misunderstandings; so that the author's eye, floating between the psyche of the two protagonists at the heart of the story, reveals inconsolable aspects in such Jean-Marc: a man increasingly prostrated by the fear of no longer being able to one day recognize his partner Chantal; moving to the fear of no longer being loved/admired by her, also dealing with a hidden admirer, who will annoy her with letters that seem to know her deeply, pushing her to point the finger now at someone and then at someone else around her; now against herself, to silence the ambivalent, subversive effect that the letters raise within her.

After the brief mystery is resolved, the remaining concluding part of the story unsuccessfully tries to elevate her to something meaningful instead yielding to the realm of surreal rhetoric, leaving quite a bitter aftertaste. Kundera will be able to reinforce the analysis on the boundary separating the individual from the collectivity in the subsequent work, "Ignorance", with a beautiful metaphor on the Odyssey; through memories always at the mercy of mystification, although exaggerating the concept, as already happened in Pirandello's works, and as happens with the devices used in this book to raise anxiety towards privacy in the reader, not even reachable in the grave it seems, and where nevertheless even the trail of memories should cease?

In short, the well-trodden ground, inherently thorny, does not find in this episode a conscious guide in its author.