<p><strong>"I will say no more about this lacerating book except to urge it upon all who care about literature in our difficult era." -- <em>Boston Globe</em></strong></p><p><strong>"A sly and merciless lampoon of revolutionary romanticism. . . Kundera commits some of the funniest literary savaging since Evelyn Waugh polished off Dickens in <em>A Handful of Dust</em>."-- Time</strong></p><p>Milan Kundera initially intended to call this novel <em>The Lyrical Age</em>. The lyrical age, according to him, is youth, and this novel, above all, is an epic of adolescence; an ironic epic that tenderly erodes sacrosanct values: childhood, motherhood, revolution, and even poetry. </p><p>Jaromil is in fact a poet. His mother made him a poet and accompanies him (figuratively) to his love bed and (literally) to his deathbed. A ridiculous and touching character, horrifying and totally innocent ("innocence with its bloody smile"!), Jaromil is at the same time a true poet. He's no creep, he's Rimbaud. Rimbaud entrapped by the communist revolution, entrapped in a somber farce.</p>