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Testaments Betrayed is written like a novel: the same characters appear and reappear throughout the nine parts of the book, as do the principal themes that preoccupy the author. Kundera once again celebrates the art of the novel, from its birth in a spirit of humor unique to European culture and sensibility - illustrated by some wonderful examples from the work of Rabelais and Cervantes - through its flowering in successive centuries.
He notes the novel's mysterious kinship with music and the parallel (but not simultaneous) evolution of the two arts in the West, as well as the particular wisdom the novel offers about human existence.
The art of translation is the subject of one part of the book, illuminating the significance of its title. Kundera is a passionate defender of the moral rights of the artist and the respect due a work of art and its creator's wishes. The betrayal of both - often by their most passionate proponents - is on the principal themes of Testaments Betrayed.
Testaments Betrayed is a book rich in ideas about the time in which we live and how we have become who we are, about Western culture in general. It is also a personal essay, in which Kunder discusses the experience of exile - and an impassioned attack on the shifting moral judgements and persecutions of art and artist.
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Previews available in: English Chinese French
Subjects
Criticism and interpretation, Fiction, Technique, History and criticism, Histoire et critique, Littérature, Roman, Roman européen, Critique et interprétation, Sexualité dans la littérature, Musique, Appréciation, Théorie, Essais français, Auteurs tchèques, Fiction -- Technique., Literature, history and criticism, Music and literature, Fiction, short stories (single author), Xiao shuo, Wen xue li lun, Fiction, generalPeople
Franz Kafka (1883-1924)Showing 5 featured editions. View all 27 editions?
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1
Testaments Betrayed
May 6, 2004, Faber and Faber
Paperback
- New Ed edition
0571173373 9780571173372
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2
Testaments Betrayed: Essay in Nine Parts, An
September 11, 1996, Harper Perennial
Paperback
in English
0060927518 9780060927516
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3
Bei bei pan di yi zhu
1995, Niu jin da hsueh chu ban she, Ren ming chu ban she
in Chinese
- Di yi ban
7208021627 9787208021624
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4
Testaments betrayed: an essay in nine parts
1995, HarperCollins Publishers
in English
- 1st ed.
0060171456 9780060171452
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5 |
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First Sentence
"The pregnant Madame Grandgousier ate too much tripe, and they had to give her a purgative; it was so strong that the placenta let go, the fetus Gargantua slipped into a vein, traveled up her system, and came out of his mama's ear."
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