Immortality - Milan Kundera
I've been trying to solve a small mystery around this book for the past couple of days. Based on all the information I can find about the Independent Foreign Fiction Award, the inaugural winner was Orhan Pamuk's The White Castle. And yet my paperback copy of Milan Kundera's Immortality has the words, "Winner of the inaugural Independent Award for Foreign Fiction 1991" printed on it.
Will I ever figure out what's gone on here? I doubt it. Will I obsess over it for at least the next couple of months? Absolutely.
Anyway.
I went on a bit of a journey with this book. In the first few chapters I loved it. The way Kundera constructed an entire character out of a single gesture was magical, and I really liked the tension of being constantly reminded that Agnes is just a fictional character. I found myself asking why I should care about this character when I know she's "just" fictional, and then thinking about the fact that that's always the case when reading fiction. Why was this different simply because my attention had been drawn to the artifice?
Over the next hundred-or-so pages my initial joy waned, and I started to feel a little bored. This was particularly true of part two, which turns into historical fiction about Goethe, someone who I know nothing about. I struggled to find a reason to care, and the text became a bit of a slog. I didn't seriously consider DNFing, but I think I might have started to consider it had I not been reading this for a "challenge".
And then it all changed again. At some part between pages 100-200 I realised I was in love with the book again. And from that moment on I was enchanted.
I finished this a few days ago and I've spent the intervening time trying to figure out how to talk about it. I'm not sure I've quite got there yet, but I know that if I leave it any longer I'll never write anything about it at all. It's a strange, slippery book, and I'm not sure I fully understood it, but I know that I liked it a lot. Much of the philosophy and many of the literary and historical references - particularly around Goethe - were completely wasted on me. But what I did appreciate was the way this plays with and explores the novel as a form, the way it interrogates the act and craft of writing and examines what authors are actually doing when they construct characters and plots.
I've begun to think of this as a deconstructed novel, with the first five parts essentially showing the process of developing Agnes and her story, which then becomes background material for the "real" novel that exists in part 6. Part 7 somehow brings everything full circle, wrapping up where the book began in a way that feels like a magic trick.
Kundera's writing is a joy to read. It's light and conversational but imbued with warmth and scholarly knowledge. It reminded me a little of B.S. Johnson or Italo Calvino, though I think a lot of that is to do with the actual content of the book rather than the tone.
As this reading challenge goes on I'll be interested to see whether I can identify any similarities between the books that win the Independent Foreign Fiction Award. Right now I can't see much similarity between Immortality and The White Castle, but since these two years didn't have shortlists I feel a little like the prize hasn't properly got started yet and hasn't found its rhythm or voice.
We'll see how it develops.