Testamenti Traditi

Description

Testaments Betrayed is written like a novel: the same characters appear and reappear throughout the nine parts of the book, as do the principal themes that preoccupy the author. Kundera once again celebrates the art of the novel, from its birth in a spirit of humor unique to European culture and sensibility - illustrated by some wonderful examples from the work of Rabelais and Cervantes - through its flowering in successive centuries. He notes the novel's mysterious kinship with music and the parallel (but not simultaneous) evolution of the two arts in the West, as well as the particular wisdom the novel offers about human existence. The art of translation is the subject of one part of the book, illuminating the significance of its title. Kundera is a passionate defender of the moral rights of the artist and the respect due a work of art and its creator's wishes. The betrayal of both - often by their most passionate proponents - is on the principal themes of Testaments Betrayed. Testaments Betrayed is a book rich in ideas about the time in which we live and how we have become who we are, about Western culture in general. It is also a personal essay, in which Kunder discusses the experience of exile - and an impassioned attack on the shifting moral judgements and persecutions of art and artist.

First Sentence

The pregnant Madame Grandgousier ate too much tripe, and they had to give her a purgative; it was so strong that the placenta let go, the fetus Gargantua slipped into a vein, traveled up her system, and came out of his mama's ear.

Subjects

Other Editions

• Testamenti TraditiPaperback
• Les testaments trahisGallimard1993-01-01
• Los testamentos traicionadosTusquets Editores1994-01-01
• Testaments betrayedHarperCollins Publishers1995-01-01
• Testaments BetrayedHardcoverFaber and Faber1995-09-18
• Les Testaments TrakisMass Market PaperbackGallimard-Jeunesse1995-12-31