“Insignificance conjoined with humor”- A Review of Kundera’s Novel “The Festival of Insignificance”

The story of human instincts and passions is very old. From Sophocles’ ‘Oedipus’, to Ovid’s, ‘Metamorphoses’, Virgil’s, ‘Aeneid’, and Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ and then description of this instinct could be seen in Hardy’s, “Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Lawrence’s, ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’. The theme of sex and sexuality has many aspects in literature. Specially in dying Victoria age, Hardy has deftly taken this issue and in twentieth century, Laurence also took this issue under cover. But now in this post-modern era, sex and sexuality is dealt with openly. Kundera is an exceptional writer of this age. He has been member of communist party, that’s why taking the structure unity of Soviet Union, under Stalin, and its massive pressure on Stalin’s Comrades, by Stalin, the story of the novel reveals this aspect along with the new thinking of the new world, in which we are living now. This age also could be termed as the age of ‘Late Capitalism’, where there is a severe contrast present between ‘Capital’ and ‘Production’. But apart from it Kundera has very keenly written this novel with taking various themes, like suicide, European thinking after post-war, gender and fear of women not to produce children, and other issues after post-war, in a light vein. He has also described the life of France, a cultural hub of Europe. So, in a sense post-modern novel but with the description of its own Kind. He says that it’s the age f triviality or in other way of ‘Insignificance’.