The Festival of Insignificance

　　我們從很久以前就知道，
　　這個世界已經不可能推翻，不可能改造，
　　也不可能讓它向前的悲慘進程停下來了。
　　我們只有一種可能的抵抗，
　　就是不把它當一回事。
 
　　無意義，我的朋友，這是存在的本質。
　　它隨時隨地永遠與我們同在。
　　就算沒有人想看到它，它也會出現：
　　在恐怖之中，在血腥鬥爭之中，在最不幸的厄運之中。
　　要在這麼悲劇性的境況裡認出它，直呼其名，
　　這經常需要一點勇氣。
　　可是我們不只要認出它，還要去愛它，
　　無意義，我們必須學習去愛它。
　　呼吸這圍繞著我們的無意義，
　　它是智慧的鎖鑰，它是好心情的鎖鑰……
 
　　★本書中譯版《無謂的盛宴》由皇冠出版。

　　From the internationally acclaimed, bestselling author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, an unexpected and enchanting novel—the culmination of his life's work.

　　Casting light on the most serious of problems and at the same time saying not one serious sentence; being fascinated by the reality of the contemporary world and at the same time completely avoiding realism—that’s The Festival of Insignificance. Readers who know Milan Kundera’s earlier books know that the wish to incorporate an element of the “unserious” in a novel is not at all unexpected of him. In Immortality, Goethe and Hemingway stroll through several chapters together talking and laughing. And in Slowness, Vera, the author’s wife, says to her husband: “you’ve often told me you meant to write a book one day that would have not a single serious word in it…I warn you: watch out. Your enemies are lying in wait.”

　　Now, far from watching out, Kundera is finally and fully realizing his old aesthetic dream in this novel that we could easily view as a summation of his whole work. A strange sort of summation. Strange sort of epilogue. Strange sort of laughter, inspired by our time, which is comical because it has lost all sense of humor. What more can we say? Nothing. Just read.

作者簡介

米蘭．昆德拉

　　一九二九年生於捷克的布爾諾。一九七五年流亡移居法國。作品有長篇小說：《玩笑》、《賦別曲》 （榮獲義大利最佳外國文學獎）、《生活在他方》（榮獲法國文壇最高榮譽之一的『麥迪西大獎』）、《笑忘書》、《生命中不能承受之輕》、《不朽》、《緩 慢》、《身分》、《無知》；短篇小說集：《可笑的愛》；評論集：《小說的藝術》、《被背叛的遺囑》、《簾幕》；此外還有一部舞台劇本《雅克和他的主人》 （靈感來自狄德羅小說《宿命論者雅克和他的主人》）。
　　
　　The French-Czech novelist Milan Kundera was born in the Czech Republic and has lived in France since 1975. He is the author of the internationally acclaimed and bestselling novels The Joke, Life is Elsewhere, The Farewell Waltz, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Immortality, and the short-story collection Laughable Loves -- all originally in Czech. His more recent novels , Slowness, Identity, and Ignorance, as well as his nonfiction works, The Art of the Novel, Testaments Betrayed, The Curtain, and Encounter, were originally written in French.