Immortality
A novel by Milan Kundera written in 1988 and at the time of writing the most recent he has written in Czech.
The novel has several parallel tracks, which makes it very difficult to describe, but I'll have a shot.
It is about love. It is about life. It is about immortality. It is also about the novelist Milan Kundera writing a book. We follow him in conversations with his friend Avenarius about the book he is writing. As in this example:
Avenarius lapsed into a perplexed silence. After a while, he asked me in a kindly voice 'And what will your novel be called?'
'The Unbearable Lightness of Being.'
'I think somebody has already written that.'
'I did! But I was wrong about the title then. That title was supposed to belong to the novel I'm writing right now.'
We stopped talking, and concentrated on the taste of the wine and the duck.
– Immortality by Milan Kundera
At the same time we also follow the story he's writing and the characters in that story. It all happens in parallel, and occasionally they even briefly touch, like his friend meeting one of the people in the book on the street. This gets even more confusing when he starts bringing Goethe and Hemingway into the story.
One of the reasons he is doing this is to make sure that this novel stays a novel, and not a masquerading film script. He wants to make sure that nobody can make a film out of the book and still keep the experience and richness of the book. At least that is what he says in the book.
This approach makes the book very intellectual, and many parts of the jigsaw don't fall into place until quite late in the book. In spite of this the book is very pleasant to read, and I would recommend it to anybody. I would even recommend it to myself, since I think that this is the kind of book reading experience that can only improve with repetition.