Ignorance by Milan Kundera

Kundera’s novel, Ignorance, follows themes similar to several of his other novels, with the concentration of this one on nostalgia, on what people believe they should be feeling at a given moment even when they are not, and on how the decisions we make at the “Age of Ignorance” (or in our late teens/early twenties) affect our lives when we come to know and understand ourselves better later in life. Intermixed with these themes is the story of Odysseus’ travels in the Odyssey and how it parallels the Great Return home of each of the characters.

The story is about two Czech émigrés who left during the Communist era and are now returning to Czech for the first time since the Communist regime ended in 1989. During Irena’s return, she realizes how people have come to accept her as an émigré who left instead of staying loyal to her country. As she meets with her old Czech friends, she realizes the terms of their acceptance. They want to know nothing about her life outside the country. They want to amputate it, as she puts it, and by doing so, make her the same as them. Josef, on the other hand, returns to visit his family and revisits an old diary of his childhood. He marvels at the character he once was with distaste – how could he have been that creature, who seems so different from who he is now? These two émigrés end up meeting by chance to continue an old romance that neither of them accurately remembers.

One of the main themes of the book is the terms and conditions by which people accept another as one of their own. They look for similarities, memories they can both reminisce together, even if they both share a different perception of what actually occurred. After all, no two people share the same memories, which fade with time. Often people don’t even remember themselves for who they were, and reading old writings, they ask themselves how this writer could have possibly been them at one point. People change, but others don’t see them for who they are now. Only who they once knew, or as Kundera puts it “a reality no longer is what it was when it was it cannot be reconstructed.” 

I always walk away from a Kundera book thinking a little differently about life, and while many of the ideas in this book have been written about in greater detail in his other books, I still enjoyed it as a quick read/refresher.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

Bought this book at a whim and did not wish to read it for a long long time, till I picked it up and then could not stop until I had reached the very last page.
   Sijie’s first novel or rather novella (considering it is only something like 184 pages long) begins with the Chinese Revolution headed by General Mao and the concept of “re-education” – as a result of which two teenagers are transported to an ancient village away from civilization.
   No one being re-educated is permitted to read any books excepting the little book of sayings written by Chairman Mao. It is when, through a series of events, they obtain a book written by Balzac (the reading of which is now a crime) that suddenly the world of literature and of ideas abruptly opens to them. They are so hungry for more that all they can do is dream (and scheme) about getting other such books. They later meet the third primary character in this book, the very beautiful young seamstress , and, by relating to her the words of Balzac , produce in her too the desire for more such words and thoughts. She is as hungry for new stories and ideas as are the two boys.
   Luo, now in love with the girl, wants to obtain more books for her, not only to please her but also to raise her up from her lack of education to become something other than the peasant girl she is (albeit a beautiful one). In that desire to “re-educate” the girl he loves resides their ultimate future.
   This is a wonderful story about relationships and love, about the buoyancy of youthful souls thrown into the cold and potentially drowning waters of very trying circumstances, and, lastly, about the need for those things in our lives that stir our imaginations to life and so generate fresh desires and new dreams within us. It is the stirring of human imagination that ultimately changes the world.