The Curtain

A landmark essay about the value of the novel from the superstar author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

A magic curtain, woven of legends, hung before the world . . . Cervantes sent Don Quixote journeying and tore the curtain. The world opened before the knight errant in all the comical nakedness of its prose.’

For Kundera, this curtain represents our individual, ready-made, pre-interpreted perceptions of the world. The job of the novelist, he argues, is to rip through it to reveal what it hides.

In this outstanding essay, one of world literature’s most distinctive thinkers celebrates the history and value of fiction in Western civilisation. Too often, a novel is thought about only within the confines of the language and nation of its origin, when in fact its development has always occurred across borders: Fielding learned from Cervantes, Joyce from Flaubert, Marquez from Kafka. The real work of a novel transcends locality by revealing a previously unknown aspect of human existence, asking life’s biggest questions – and in his extraordinary prose, Kundera describes how the greatest novels do just that.

‘Magnificent.’ Observer
‘Thoughtful and thought-provoking. We owe Kundera thanks.’ Sunday Times
‘Full of insights, which show Kundera to be a wonderful critic . . . His tone is seductive, sly and, above all, personal.’ Financial Times