The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), by Milan Kundera, is a philosophical novel about a man and two women and their lives in the Prague Spring of the Czechoslovak Communist period in 1968. Although written in 1982, the novel was not published until two years later in France. The Czech: Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí and French: l'Insoutenable légèreté d'être titles are more common worldwide.

A young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing; one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover -- these are the two couples whose story is told in this masterful novel. 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 "the unbearable lightness of being" not only as the consequence of our pristine actions but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine.

PART ONE Lightness and Weight

PART TWO Soul and Body

PART THREE Words Misunderstood

PART FOUR Soul and Body

PART FIVE Lightness and Weight

PART SIX The Grand March

PART SEVEN Karenin's Smile