Testaments Betrayed: An Essay in Nine Parts

Milan Kundera, one of the twentieth century's masters of fiction and author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Immortality, offers a brilliant and thought provoking essay, following in the tradition of his highly regarded The Art of the Novel. 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 celebrates the particular wisdom the novel offers about human existence.