http://joys.net/6335/the-book-of-laughter-and-forgetting-2/ Bringing Joys and Happiness Fri, 13 Mar 2020 09:48:42 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.2 http://joys.net/6335/the-book-of-laughter-and-forgetting-2/#comment-19747 Yaumo Gaucho Sat, 26 Oct 2013 01:43:49 +0000 http://joys.net/6335/the-book-of-laughter-and-forgetting-2/#comment-19747 Beautiful philosophical – historical – sexual meditation Like Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, this book is largely about angels and devils, or good and evil. The setting is (mostly) Prague around 1970, and the basic political themes — Czech and Russian Communists and their adversaries — are used as a foundation for the more ethereal, philosophical themes, such as the nature of humor, the nature of history, and the differences between the genders.

]]> http://joys.net/6335/the-book-of-laughter-and-forgetting-2/#comment-19746 oh_pete Sat, 26 Oct 2013 01:13:53 +0000 http://joys.net/6335/the-book-of-laughter-and-forgetting-2/#comment-19746 Astonishingly Wonderful; A Must-Read THE BOOK OF LAUGHTER AND FORGETTING is a rare and precious jewel. In many ways this is an experimental novel, the seven different parts of the book are compared by the author to Beethoven’s variations upon a musical theme. These different variations either describe, converge upon, or dance around the story of Tamina, a Czech exile who ran away from the communists with her husband only to see him die of disease soon afterward. As time passes she becomes obsessed with the mortal fear that she will forget him. She cannot go back to her homeland but she can try to get her husband’s love letters back, to bring some of his laughter back into her life, to remind her that she is not alone.

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