To say what the book is about is like trying to capture a conflagration in a glass jar; it escapes farther afield; it displays a new dimension; it teases and is lambently in a number of places at once. It is impossible of definition. The Unbearable Lightness of Being is, at one level, about Czechoslovakia in the sixties, the period during and after the Russian occupation, Czechoslovakia as mirrored in the lives of a tiny handful of intellectuals, the suffocation in their abilities, and their final dwindling into nonexistence through social disuse and frustration. It is not a bitter book but tender and brimming with long-suppressed tears. At another level, it is about love, the recalcitrant celebration of the love of Tomas for Tereza, Tereza’s for her dog Karenin, of Franz for the painter, Sabina. The novel is about freedom yearned for—of the Czechs from their Russian oppressors, of Tomas in his frenzy to discover the mystery and body of the world through the sexual responses of different women, of Sabina in her flight from the man who loves her.
The values of ‘love’ and ‘freedom’, which the author describes as ‘weight’ and ‘lightness’ respectively, are perceived by him as equally important and in an enduring tension with each other, Kundera sees the tension between weight and lightness as one of the significant philosophical tensions of our time. Certainly, Kundera places his story in the heart of it, Tomas choosing one pole, Sabina another, and the author himself emerging from the conflict, innocent and dry, judging neither pole as better or more positive.