Farewell Waltz

A dazzling tragicomic tale from the author of modern classic The Unbearable Lightness of Being. 'Anyone reading Kundera's books is unlikely to forget them. They have an essential energy, a difference.' New Statesman 'Kundera is a self-confessed hedonist in a world beset by politics . . . Marvellous.' Salman Rushdie Klima, a celebrated jazz trumpeter, learns that a young nurse with whom he spent one brief night at a fertility spa is pregnant - and she has decided he is the father. Thus begins a whirlwind farce as he returns to the spa: an accelerating dance which unfolds over five madcap days, encompassing Klima's jealous wife, the nurse's equally jealous boyfriend, a fanatical gynaecologist, a rich American (at once Don Juan and saint) and an elderly political prisoner who is holding a farewell party before emigration. Posing serious philosophical questions with his inimitable blasphemous lightness, Farewell Waltz is perhaps the most purely entertaining of Kundera's novels, rich in black humour and profound human insights.

The French-Czech novelist Milan Kundera was born in the Czech Republic and has lived in France since 1975. He died in Paris in 2023.