6.6 /10 1 Votes
Translator Linda Asher Language French Published in English 2015 Genre Novel Publisher Éditions Gallimard | 3.3/5 Goodreads Country Czechoslovakia Publication date 2013 Originally published 2013 Page count 115 ISBN 0062356895 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Original title La fête de l'insignifiance Similar Slowness, The Book of Laughter and Forg, Life Is Elsewhere, Testaments betrayed, The Farewell Waltz | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Festival of Insignificance (French: La fête de l'insignifiance) is a novel by Milan Kundera. This is his eleventh fictional work. It is about a man named Alain, who has not seen his mother since his childhood; Ramon, an intellectual who has retired; D’Ardelo, a man who has a narcissistic personality; Charles and “Caliban” are two people who operate a catering firm; and Quaquelique is an old man who remains attracted to women. Quaquelique manages to seduce women using his skill at non-stop talking. The novel is set in Paris. The themes include "the erotic potential; the link between mother and child; the procreative role of sex; angels...[,] navel gazing...and insignificance. The novels' characters discuss the philosophical ideas of Hegel, Kant and Schopenhauer. The novel is made up of seven parts (an approach he also used in his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being). The theme of insignificance was also used in The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Reception
The Guardian stated that "...there’s something very appealing in the flavour and personality of this new short novel..." The Guardian states that while "[p]erhaps the textures of the novel are thin, and perhaps it does seem to circle around some missing centre – of drive, or story. But then again, that’s part of the point: everything ends in Ramon’s hymn to insignificance, celebrating the life that doesn’t signify anything, the world that is just itself “in all its obviousness, all its innocence, in all its beauty”. And indeed this 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."