Life Is Elsewhere

Life is Elsewhere

Befriend a budding poet and his adoring mother in this seductive early novel - winner of the Prix Médicis - by the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. 'An artist, clearly one of the greatest to be found anywhere.' Salman Rushdie 'Kundera's achievement has been to bring both private life and political life into one comic framework.' Ian McEwan Young Jaromil knows he is special; in fact, he is a poet bestowed with literary genius, heir to Rimbaud. He knows this because his adoring mother told him so. Adult Jaromil, still revelling in these truths, draws on his talents to find romance whilst making his mark on the world through both his poetry and advancing the Communist revolution. Son, Poet, Lover. In which of these roles does Jaromil's true existence lie? A blazingly satirical reflection on the 'lyrical age' of youthful innocence, this ironic epic of adolescence showcases Kundera's savage yet tender wit at its finest.

Life Is Elsewhere

"I will say no more about this lacerating book except to urge it upon all who care about literature in our difficult era." — Boston Globe "A sly and merciless lampoon of revolutionary romanticism. . . Kundera commits some of the funniest literary savaging since Evelyn Waugh polished off Dickens in A Handful of Dust."— Time Milan Kundera initially intended to call this novel The Lyrical Age. The lyrical age, according to him, is youth, and this novel, above all, is an epic of adolescence; an ironic epic that tenderly erodes sacrosanct values: childhood, motherhood, revolution, and even poetry. Jaromil is in fact a poet. His mother made him a poet and accompanies him (figuratively) to his love bed and (literally) to his deathbed. A ridiculous and touching character, horrifying and totally innocent ("innocence with its bloody smile"!), Jaromil is at the same time a true poet. He's no creep, he's Rimbaud. Rimbaud entrapped by the communist revolution, entrapped in a somber farce.

The Homiletic Review