Books › Valčík na rozloučenou
Valčík na rozloučenou
First published 1976 · 353 pages
A darkly elegant, philosophical farce where human desires and moral ambiguities collide in an accelerating dance of absurdity.
What it feels like
Reading this novel feels like being swept onto a dance floor where the music is slightly out of tune and the partners are all hiding daggers behind their backs. It moves with a brisk, accelerating rhythm, structured like a classic farce but steeped in a profound, melancholic cynicism. The narrative voice is wry and philosophically detached, observing the characters' romantic entanglements and moral failings with a chilling, blasphemous lightness. As the intersecting lives in the claustrophobic spa town spiral out of control, the atmosphere shifts from absurdist comedy to a darker meditation on the impossibility of true tragedy in the modern world. It is a perfect fit for readers who delight in sharp, intellectual satires that expose the absurdities of human nature.
- Mood
- absurdist
- melancholic
- farcical
- claustrophobic
- Tone
- wry
- cynical
- philosophical
- darkly comedic
- detached
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- the absurdity of desire · illusion of control · political disillusionment · moral ambiguity · the weightlessness of tragedy
- The writing
- Elegant, precise, and deceptively light, using a detached narrative voice to dissect profound existential questions.
- The arc
- Moves from a seemingly light, farcical comedy of errors into a chillingly cynical confrontation with moral emptiness.
- Who it's for
- Lovers of dark, intellectual comedies of manners who appreciate philosophical musings woven into tightly plotted, absurdist scenarios.
Content notes
- infidelity
- sexual content
- suicide themes
- misogyny
About the book
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.
Description from Open Library.
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