SlownessKundera
1998 Nominated

Slowness

artwork-image

ABOUT
THE BOOK

Slowness was Milan Kundera’s first novel written in French. Disconcerted and enchanted, the reader follows him through a midsummer’s night in which two tales of seduction, separated in time by more than two hundred years, interweave and oscillate between the sublime and ridiculous.

As Kundera’s readers would expect, Slowness is at the same time a formidable display of existential analysis. Slowness (and rapidity), discretion (and exhibitionism) are the principal concepts, and those which are to the reader like vital keys for understanding life in our contemporary world.

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR Milan
Kundera

The Franco-Czech novelist Milan Kundera was born in Brno and has lived in France, his second homeland, since 1975.

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, and Ignorance, as well as his nonfiction works, The Art of the Novel, Testaments Betrayed, The Curtain, and Encounter, were originally written in French.

The Franco-Czech novelist Milan Kundera was born in Brno and has lived in France, his second homeland, since 1975.

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, and Ignorance, as well as his nonfiction works, The Art of the Novel, Testaments Betrayed, The Curtain, and Encounter, were originally written in French.

ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Linda
Asher

Linda Asher is a former fiction editor at the New Yorker and the translator of works by Victor Hugo, Georges Simenon, and Milan Kundera, among others.

Linda Asher is a former fiction editor at the New Yorker and the translator of works by Victor Hugo, Georges Simenon, and Milan Kundera, among others.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Country
United Kingdom
Original Language
French
Author
Publisher
Faber & Faber
Translator
Linda Asher

RELATED FEATURES

Video April 7 2026

The 2026 Shortlist

Discover this year's Dublin Literary Award Shortlist
News April 7 2026

2026 Dublin Literary Award Shortlist is Announced

Delve into the 6 novels shortlisted this year.
News April 2 2026

Past Winner Spotlight: Michael Crummey

Reflecting on his 2025 Dublin Literary Award win with his novel 'The Adversary', libraries, literature and more.
News March 11 2026

Translator Spotlight: Jo Heinrich

Reflecting on translating the 2023 winning novel 'Marzahn, Mon Amour' and life as a literary translator.

STAY CONNECTED

Stay in touch and sign up to our newsletter to receive all the latest news and updates on the Dublin Literary Award.