The Farewell Party

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In this dark farce of a novel, set in an old-fashioned Central Euroepean spa town, eight characters are swept up in an accelerating dance: a pretty nurse & her repairman boyfriend; an oddball gynecologist; a rich American (at once saint & Don Juan); a popular trumpeter & his beautiful, obsessively jealous wife; an unillusioned former political prisoner about to leave his country & his young woman ward. Perhaps the most brilliantly plotted & sheerly entertaining of Milan Kundera's novels, Farewell Waltz poses the most serious questions with a blasphemous lightness that makes us see that the modern world has deprived us even of the right to tragedy. Written in Bohemia in 1969-70, this book was first published in 1976 in France under the title La valse aux adieux (Farewell Waltz), & later in thirty-four other countries. This beautiful new translation, made from the French text prepared by the novelist himself, fully reflects his own tone & intentions. As such it offers an opportunity for both the discovery & the rediscovery of one of the very best of a great writer's works.