An edition of La lenteur (1994)

Huan man

Chu ban
  • 4.2 (6 ratings) ·
  • 22 Want to read
  • 9 Have read

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  • 4.2 (6 ratings) ·
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Last edited by MARC Bot
July 30, 2024 | History
An edition of La lenteur (1994)

Huan man

Chu ban
  • 4.2 (6 ratings) ·
  • 22 Want to read
  • 9 Have read

After the gravity of The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Immortality, Slowness comes as a surprise: it is certainly Kundera's lightest novel, a divertimento, an opera buffa, with, as the author himself says, "not a single serious word in it"; then, too, it is the first of his novels to have been written in French (in the eyes of the French public, turning him definitively into a "French writer").

Disconcerted and enchanted, the reader follows the narrator of Slowness through a midsummer's night in which two tales of seduction, separated by more than two hundred years, interweave and oscillate between the sublime and the comic. In the eighteenth-century narrative, the marvelous Madame de T. summons a young nobleman to her chateau one evening and gives him an unforgettable lesson in the art of seduction and the pleasures of love.

In the same chateau at the end of the twentieth century, a hapless young intellectual experiences a rather less successful night. Distracted by his desire to be the center of public attention at a convention of entomologists, Vincent loses the beautiful Julie - ready and willing though she is to share an evening of intimacy and sexual pleasure with him - and suffers the ridicule of his peers.

A "morning-after" encounter between the two young men from different centuries brings the novel to a poignant close: Vincent has already obliterated the memory of his humiliation as he prepares to speed back to Paris on his motorcycle, while the young nobleman will lie back on the cushions of his carriage and relive the night before in the lingering pleasure of memory.

Publish Date
Language
Chinese
Pages
140

Buy this book

Previews available in: English Chinese French

Edition Availability
Cover of: Slowness
Slowness
1997, HarperPerennial
in English - 1st HarperPerennial ed.
Cover of: Slowness
Slowness
1996, HarperCollinsPublishers
in English - 1st ed.
Cover of: i vradytita / η βραδύτητα
i vradytita / η βραδύτητα
Jul 18, 1996, Vivliopoleion tis Estias
paperback
Cover of: Huan man
Huan man
1996, Shi bao wen hua chu ban qi yeh gu fen yu xian gong si
in Chinese - Chu ban
Cover of: La lenteur
La lenteur: roman
1994, Gallimard
in French

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Book Details


Edition Notes

Translation of: La lenteur.

Published in
Taibei Shi
Series
Da shi ming zuo fang -- 36
Genre
Fiction.

Classifications

Library of Congress
PL2671.U47 L4612 1996

The Physical Object

Pagination
140 p. ;
Number of pages
140

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL22958614M
Internet Archive
huanman00kund
ISBN 10
9571320846
OCLC/WorldCat
36118741, 889349065
Library Thing
4845293

First Sentence

"We suddenly had the urge to spend the evening and night in a chateau."

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History

Download catalog record: RDF / JSON
July 30, 2024 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
February 28, 2022 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
February 8, 2022 Edited by dcapillae Merge works
February 6, 2022 Edited by kucharczyk Change title to French
December 11, 2009 Created by WorkBot add works page