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Ignorance I imagine the feelings of two people meeting again after many years. In the past they spent some time together, and therefore they think that they are linked by the same experiences, the same recollections. The same recollections? That's where the misunderstanding starts: they don't have the same recollections; each of them retains two or three small scenes from the past, but each has his own; their recollections aren't similar; they don't intersect; and even in terms of quantity they are not comparable: one person remembers the other more than he is remembered; first because memory capacity varies among individuals (an explanation that each of them would at least find acceptable), but also (and this is more painful to admit) because they don't hold the same importance for each other. When Irena saw Josef at the airport, she remembered every detail of their long-ago adventure; Josef remembered nothing. From the very first moment their encounter was based on an unjust and revolting inequality. As a huge Milan Kundera fan, it was only a matter of time before i read his most recent book, Ignorance. This one is similar to his recent style seen in SLowness and Identit and a far cry from the amazing work in The Unbearable Lightnes of Being and The Joke. To me, every book by Kundera is worth a read. I wanted to put a longer excerpt but this one is so meaningful for me that I couldn't not put it up. |
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