Identità

In this slim but powerful novel, Milan Kundera explores the fragile boundary between who we are and how our partners see us. The story centers on Chantal and Jean-Marc, a couple whose deep love is suddenly threatened by a minor, everyday moment of insecurity.

When Chantal remarks that "men don't look at me anymore," Jean-Marc, out of a desperate desire to reassure her, begins sending her anonymous love letters signed by a secret admirer. What begins as a romantic gesture quickly spirals into a psychological labyrinth of jealousy, suspicion, and a terrifying loss of self. As the letters continue, the two lovers begin to wonder: Do I really know the person sleeping next to me?

Author: Milan Kundera

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.