L'Identité

Sometimes — perhaps only for an instant — we fail to recognize a companion; for a moment their identity ceases to exist, and thus we come to doubt our own. The effect is at its most acute in a couple, where our existence is given meaning by our perception of a lover, and theirs of us. With his astonishing skill at building on and out from the significant moment, Kundera has placed such a situation and the resulting wave of panic at the core of his new novel. In a narrative as intense as it is brief, a moment of confusion sets in motion a complex chain of events which forces the reader to cross and recross the divide between fantasy and reality.

First sentence: A hotel in a small town on the Normandy coast, which they found in a guidebook.

Year

2005

Language

English

Publisher

Harper Perennial

Editions

21

Reader rating

3.7 / 5 (6)

Pages

176

ISBN

9780060930318

Data source: Wikidata