The Joke
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| Author | Milan Kundera |
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| Country | Czechoslovakia |
| Language | Czech |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Ceskoslovensky Spisovatel |
| Released | 1967 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 292 pp |
| ISBN | NA |
The Joke is Milan Kundera's first novel, originally published in 1967.
[edit] Plot introduction
It is told from the viewpoint of four different narrators (the only of Kundera's novels that does not feature the author himself as narrator); as the novel nears its climax, the point of view shifts at a repeating rate. The novel partly criticizes Communist Czechoslovakia, though Kundera's response to such a reading was, "Spare me your Stalinism. The Joke is a love story." (Preface to The Joke.) A major theme of the novel is History as an overwhelming force that plays jokes on each and all of us.
The English translation of the book has gone through several versions since 1969, and it is only the fifth version published in 1992 that Kundera is happy with.
[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
In 1968, The Joke was adapted into a film by Czech New Wave director Jaromil Jireš, but the film was almost immediately banned following the Soviet clampdown on the Prague Spring.
[edit] References in Music
The song "Same Bastards" by American indie band Shinobu is inspired by the Joke, making references to working in the mines after eviction from a university, Lucie and Ludvik.
| Works by Milan Kundera | |
|---|---|
| Novels: The Joke | Laughable Loves | Life Is Elsewhere | The Farewell Waltz | The Book of Laughter and Forgetting | The Unbearable Lightness of Being | Immortality | Slowness | Identity | Ignorance | |
| Non-fiction: The Art of the Novel | Testaments Betrayed | The Curtain | |
| Plays: Jacques and His Master | |
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