{"product_id":"the-joke-9780060995058","title":"The Joke","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"A thoughtful, intricate, ambivalent novel with the reach of greatness in it.\" --John Updike\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"It is impossible to do justice here to the subtleties, comedy, and wisdom of this very beautiful novel. Milan Kundera is an artist, clearly one of the best to be found anywhere, who says that the good (and evil) that issues from men's souls matters much more than the deeds of a State. And he says it with passion, with good humor, and with love.\" --Salman Rushdie\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAll too often, this brilliant novel of thwarted love and revenge miscarried has been read for its political implications. Now, more than a quarter century after \u003cem\u003eThe Joke\u003c\/em\u003e was first published and several years after the collapse of the Soviet-imposed Czechoslovak regime, it becomes easier to put such implications into perspective in favor of valuing the book (and all Milan Kundera 's work) as what it truly is: great, stirring literature that sheds new light on the eternal themes of human existence.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis edition provides English-language readers an important further means toward revaluation of \u003cem\u003eThe Joke\u003c\/em\u003e. For reasons he describes in his Author's Note, Milan Kundera devoted much time to creating a completely revised translation that reflects his original as closely as any translation possibly can: reflects it in its fidelity not only to the words and syntax but also to the characteristic dictions and tonalities of the novel's narrators. The result is nothing less than the restoration of a classic.\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":50629016551698,"sku":"9780060995058","price":13.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_3687da70-3a7e-49f4-9137-b2e78db59884.jpg?v=1732716726","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-joke-9780060995058","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}