Jacques and His Master: A Play
About this audiobook
A deliciously witty and entertaining ""variation"" on Diderot's novel Jacques le Fatalist, written for Milan Kundera's ""private pleasure"" in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia.
When the ""heavy Russian irrationality"" fell on Czechoslovakia, Milan Kundera explains, he felt drawn to the spirit of the eighteenth century—""And it seemed to me that nowhere was it to be found more densely concentrated than in that banquet of intelligence, humor, and fantasy, Jacques le Fataliste.""
The upshot was this ""Homage to Diderot,"" which has now been performed throughout the United States and Europe. Here, Jacques and His Master, newly translated by Simon Callow, is a text that will delight Kundera's admirers throughout the English-speaking world.
About the author
The Franco-Czech novelist Milan Kundera (1929–2023) was born in Brno and lived in France, his second homeland, since 1975 until his death. He is the author of the novels The Joke, Life Is Elsewhere, Farewell Waltz, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Immortality, and the short story collection Laughable Loves—all originally in Czech. His more recent novels, Slowness, Identity, Ignorance, and The Festival of Insignificance, as well as his nonfiction works, The Art of the Novel, Testaments Betrayed, The Curtain, and Encounter, were originally written in French.
Simon Callow has appeared widely on stage, television and in films, including the highly successful Four Weddings and a Funeral. He has directed drama, musicals and comedy, and has written several books on actors and acting.
