The Festival of Insignificance

Only Milan Kundera could title what is likely to be his final book The Festival of Insignificance ... [A] work so bizarre and angular that, despite its brevity, it defies straightforward summary ... In Slowness, the author's wife says: "You've often told me that you meant to write a book one day that would have not a single serious word in it." The Festival of Insignificance might just be that book, less a novel than the culmination of a fervent pursuit of an aesthetic ideal.

[D]ay-lit and funny and crisply elegant ... The lack of clutter on the pages is almost sensuous ... [T]his austere prose - with its elusive ironies, and aura of the 18th century - works beautifully, just as itself, in Linda Asher's translation from the French.

This latest novella has lavish allusion to Hegel, Schopenhauer and Kant. The heavy ideas interlock with a narrative given extended metaphorical expression in the falling to earth of a floating feather. Going somewhere going nowhere. It's a beautifully composed work.

[A] curious and fascinating book ... The vivacity of Kundera's prose (translated by Linda Asher), the whirl of his ideas, and his sincere engagement with grand narratives and troubling questions remind you what a rare talent he is.