The Unbearable Lightness of Being

A young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanising; one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover - these are the two couples whose story is told in this novel. Controlled by day, Tereza's jealousy awakens by night, transformed into ineffably sad death-dreams, while Tomas, a successful surgeon, alternates loving devotion to the dependent Tereza with the ardent pursuit of other women. Sabina, an independent, free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals - of parents, husband, country, love itself - whereas her lover, the intellectual Franz, loses all because of his earnest goodness and fidelity. In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence we feel, says the novelist, "the unbearable lightness of being"--Not only as the consequence of our private acts but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine