The Farewell Party.

KUNDERA, Milan.

$975.00

Item Number: 120543

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 1976.

First edition of Kundera’s third novel. Octavo, original cloth. Presentation copy, lengthily inscribed by Milan Kundera in the year of publication on the half-title page. Near fine in a very good dust jacket, clipping from Kundera’s novel on the rear pastedown. Jacket design by Lidia Ferrara. Jacket illustration by Charles Shields. Translated from the the Czech by Peter Kussi.

Klima, a celebrated jazz trumpeter, receives a phone call announcing that a young nurse with whom he spent a brief night at a fertility spa is pregnant. She has decided he is the father. And so begins a comedy in which, during five madcap days, events unfold with ever-increasing speed. Klima's beautiful, jealous wife; the nurse's equally jealous boyfriend; a fanatical gynecologist; a rich American, at once Don Juan and saint; and an elderly political prisoner who, just before his emigration, is holding a farewell party at the spa, are all drawn into this black comedy, as in A Midsummer Night's Dream. As usual, Milan Kundera poses serious questions with a blasphemous lightness which makes us understand that the modern world has taken away our right to tragedy.