{"product_id":"life-is-elsewhere-9780060997021","title":"Life Is Elsewhere","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"I will say no more about this lacerating book except to urge it upon all who care about literature in our difficult era.\" -- \u003cem\u003eBoston Globe\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"A sly and merciless lampoon of revolutionary romanticism. . . Kundera commits some of the funniest literary savaging since Evelyn Waugh polished off Dickens in \u003cem\u003eA Handful of Dust\u003c\/em\u003e.\"-- Time\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMilan Kundera initially intended to call this novel \u003cem\u003eThe Lyrical Age\u003c\/em\u003e. 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. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJaromil 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eKundera, Milan:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - \u003cp\u003eMilan Kundera is the author of the novels \u003cem\u003eThe Joke, Farewell Waltz, Life Is Elsewhere, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Unbearable Lightness of Being\u003c\/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eImmortality\u003c\/em\u003e, and the short-story collection \u003cem\u003eLaughable Loves\u003c\/em\u003e--all originally written in Czech. His most recent novels \u003cem\u003eSlowness, Identity, and Ignorance\u003c\/em\u003e, as well as his nonfiction works \u003cem\u003eThe Art of the Novel, Testaments Betrayed, The Curtain, \u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eEncounter\u003c\/em\u003e, were originally written in French.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Harper Perennial","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50668895731986,"sku":"9780060997021","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_dc4033ec-6daf-4e7f-a916-7e27cda4cb5d.jpg?v=1733751771","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/life-is-elsewhere-9780060997021","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}