In the following essay, Misurella provides an overview of the narrative structure, major themes, characters, and recurring motifs in The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

In the following essay, Hans analyzes Kundera's conception of beauty and shame in The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

In the following essay, von Morstein examines Kundera's interpretation of existential experience and Nietzsche's philosophical concept of “eternal return” in The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

In the following essay, Pichova and Rhine examine the metaphorical and political significance of the Oedipus myth in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. According to the critics, Kundera invokes Sophocles's Oedipus Rex as an intertextual device to underscore aspects of guilt, misunderstanding, and entrapment.

In the following essay, Green discusses aspects of female objectification, sexual difference, and the significance of photography in a scene from the novel and film, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

In the following essay, Pichova examines the role of the narrator in The Unbearable Lightness of Being as active character, omniscient observer, and interloper whose manipulations allude to the psychological conditions of totalitarianism.

In the following essay, Bayley examines the dialectical structure, moral and political themes, and narrative strategy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

In the following review, DePietro discusses the portrayal of totalitarianism in contemporary world literature and Kundera's political and philosophical concerns in The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

In the following essay, Scarpetta examines the musical structure and dominant thematic motifs in The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

In the following essay, Bayley draws comparisons between Jane Austen's novelistic departures in Northanger Abbey and Kundera's response to “kitsch” and his narrative innovations in The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Below, Bayley explains the meaning and use of "kitsch" in the context of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

In the review below, Doctorow examines Kundera's narrative style in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, describing the relation between the characters and themes of his book.

In the essay below, originally published in the periodical La Repubblica on May 5, 1985, Calvino discusses the significance of digressive elements of Kundera's narrative style in The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

In the following excerpt, Lesser offers a negative assessment of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

In the following review, Howard describes The Unbearable Lightness of Being as a “superb novel, an important work of fiction.”

In the following review, Hawtree offers a favorable assessment of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

In the following positive review, Gray notes the similarities between The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

From the beginning of Milan Kundera's writing career—and even in his early short stories—he has been addressing the problem of how, in [Virginia] Woolf's formulation, the 'granite' of ideas can sit comfortably beside the 'rainbow' of poetic truth, and in ['The Unbearable Lightness of Being'] he has triumphed, though at some cost; a metaphysical inquiry into the nature of fate and two love stories, related with Kundera's usual blend...

In the following review, Glastonbury finds that in The Unbearable Lightness of Being Kundera “defines his characters as ‘my own unrealized possibilities.’”

Set in his native Czechoslovakia, in the aftermath of the "Prague Spring" of 1968, Milan Kundera's latest novel recounts the experiences of two couples and a dog entangled in the emotional and political intrigues accompanying the August arrival of Russian troops and Soviet order. The Unbearable Lightness of Being is the story of Tomas, a respected physician who abandons comfortable exile to return to his native land and falls victim to political oppression; of his wife Tereza, at once t...

In the following review, Miller asserts that The Unbearable Lightness of Being “is clearly meant to be the capstone of Kundera's career to date.”

In the following review, Koenig offers praise for The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

[Milan Kundera] has turned interrogation into a literary method…. [In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, he] holds up to scrutiny four characters whose lives cross in a kind of cat's-cradle, but more broadly this is "an investigation of human life in the trap it has become."… Lightness-weight and fidelity-betrayal are only two of the many questions Kundera dissects…. But ultimately, the only questions worth asking are those that have no answers. These "set th...