In this dark farce of a novel, set in an old-fashioned Central European
spa town, eight characters are swept up in an accelerating dance: a
pretty nurse and her repairman boyfriend; an oddball gynecologist; a
rich American (at once saint and Don Juan); a popular trumpeter and his
beautiful, obsessively jealous wife; and unillusioned former political
prisoner about to leave his country and his young woman ward. Perhaps
the most brilliantly plotted and sheerly entertaining of Milan Kundera's
novels, Farewell Waltz poses the most serious questions with a
blasphemous lightness that makes us see that the modern world has
deprived us even of the right to tragedy. Written in Bohemia in 1969-70,
this book was first published (in 1976) in France under the title La
valse aux adieux (Farewell Waltz), and later in thirty-four other
countries. This beautiful new translation, made from the French text
prepared by the novelist himself, fully reflects his own tone and
intentions. As such it offers an opportunity for both the discovery and
the rediscovery of one of the very best of a great writer's work.