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The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts Audiobook
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“A magic curtain, woven of legends, hung before the world. Cervantes sent Don Quixote journeying and tore through the curtain. The world opened before the knight-errant in all the comical nakedness of its prose.”
In this thought-provoking, endlessly enlightening, and entertaining essay on the art of the novel, renowned author Milan Kundera suggests that “the curtain” represents a ready-made perception of the world that each of us has—a pre-interpreted world. The job of the novelist, he argues, is to rip through the curtain and reveal what it hides. Here an incomparable literary artist cleverly sketches out his personal view of the history and value of the novel in Western civilization. In doing so, he celebrates a prose form that possesses the unique ability to transcend national and language boundaries in order to reveal some previously unknown aspect of human existence.
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“Cannot be missed…There is a greater openness, a more revealing sense of the sources of his authority—namely, his own life. More to the point, there is a vulnerability, as much as Kundera (who is not alone in his desire for seclusion from his readers) might like to deny it. In that vulnerability, he, like his readers, is and and will always be vulnerable, full of doubt, homeless if not lost.”
— Los Angeles Times
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“Not since Henry James, perhaps, has a fiction writer, examined the process of writing with such insight, authority, and range of reference and allusion.”
— New York Times Book Review -
“In an age of the increasingly ephemeral, Kundera has long championed the permanence of art and the Flaubertian ideal of making every word count. A true novelist, he proclaims, should aim at nothing less than to build ‘an indestructible castle of the unforgettable.’”
— Washington Post -
“Kundera embarks on a defense of the novel as if it were under siege. He argues brilliantly that this art form is the only tool we have to discover existential truths hidden by the high fly of philosophy or the self-delusions of lyric poetry…The book unfolds as the endearing stream of consciousness of a writer at the twilight of his life.”
— San Francisco Chronicle -
“A brilliant and beautifully intricate continuous argument…The Curtain is crammed with memorable phrases, exciting provocations, and breathtaking insights.”
— Guardian (London) -
“Kundera is inspiringly feisty…The Curtain is always lively and incisive, with an explication of European literature that doubles as a short history of the last two centuries of Western culture.”
— AV Club
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About Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera (1929–2023) was the author of several novels and a short-story collection originally written in Czech, and works of nonfiction originally written in French. His is best know for the novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which was adapted for an Oscar-nominated film.
About Graeme Malcolm
Graeme Malcolm was an actor and winning audiobook narrator who earned twelve AudioFile Earphones Awards. He has performed on Broadway as Pharaoh in Aida and as Sir Edward Ramsay in The King and I. His television appearances include Law & Order, Follow the River, and Mr. Halpern and Mr. Johnson (with Laurence Olivier). His film credits include A Further Gesture, The Adventures of Sebastian Cole, and Reunion.