Milan Kundera
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We might even call this book philosophical, but without that heaviness typical of certain philosophies. With lightness - there it is, there it is, the key word! - the story is told, you were there, you understand, you know the protagonists, Mr. Kundera. It's pointless to claim they are invented beings, it's not true, it's not true. Everything is true. Tomas is true, his betrayals and his love, Tereza is true, her discomfort and her love, Sabrina is true, her betrayals upon betrayals, her disillusionment, Franz is true, the insecurity and the instant madness. True is humiliated Prague, the Charles Bridge weeping its naivety in that '68, its courage. True is the dog Karenin, the loyalty and its love. Life is the mixture, the coincidence of opposites, therein lies perfection. Here's infidelity awakened every morning by the bark of loyalty, here's infidelity meeting another betrayal, here's the itch of discomfort, enduring its pains while sleeping. Courage turns into madness, commitment into disinterest, darkness into light, the dream into reality.

What does it feel like to read this lightness? Who can say, every man is notoriously unique (an individual, not by chance), everyone will react in their own way. In me, those pages have created a light heaviness that few other writings have given me. Do you believe, do you really believe that "light heaviness" is an oxymoron for aspiring alternates? No... it's the describing, it's the painting of that feeling close to melancholy (melancholy it is not), it's similar, it's melancholy without the object towards which one sighs. This is not an easy book, even if it might seem so. Philosophical reflection mixes with elegy, historical drama merges with (auto)biographical storytelling ("they're like hawks those stationed carts/words run on blushing faces/pain runs burning every road/and every wall of Prague shouts...") in a tired yet still alive watercolor. It is not an easy book, I don't want to delude you, but it is written in a way that it seems so. A gift only the great possess, that of making complex speeches appear linear!

Thank you, thank you for knowing me, Mr. Kundera, and for having written this book for me. Oh, that sensation! If only you could feel it, ephemeral and elusive as I feel it! I hope you can, I really hope you can experience that sensation similar to melancholy, which is not melancholy, it has had a name for only a few years, only since 1984 it has a name, they call it "the unbearable lightness of being". What a beautiful expression! And do you really believe, do you really believe it's an expression for aspiring alternates? No, don't think this of Milan Kundera, rather think that he has managed, that he manages, to better say, to make you feel through his words that sensation indicated in the title. Think that I am not writing under the wave of emotion anymore, yes, I have just finished reading the book, but it is not under the wave of emotion that I celebrate his painting, the painting of the story. And even if it were, it would mean it evokes an sensation so intense that it clouds even the ability to judge, so put it as you like, but this is not a book, it is the transcribed soul.