Laughable Loves [Risibles amours]

Preface by Philip Roth, who signed it on the title page.

This is Kundera’s second book to be published in the United States, after Laughable Loves — wait, after The Joke.

The edition opens with a substantial preface by Philip Roth: the two men had been in literary contact since 1973, a relationship that soon developed into a close friendship.

In 1980 Roth published a long interview in the New York Times, combining two conversations he had had with the Czech author during two visits — one to London in 1976, the other to New York in 1979, Kundera’s first stay on American soil. It was Vera, Kundera’s companion, who facilitated the friendship by acting as interpreter, since Kundera then spoke no English. It was in this interview that Kundera confided to Roth his wish to change his nationality, a wish granted the following year, in 1981, by François Mitterrand: “If someone had told me as a child: one day you will see your nation disappear from the world, I would have considered that nonsensical, something I could not imagine. A man knows he is mortal, but he takes for granted that his nation possesses a kind of eternal life.”

It was most likely during Kundera’s stay in New York that this copy was jointly signed by Kundera and Roth for Burt Britton, one of the mainstays of the famous Strand Bookstore (“Eight miles of books”) on Broadway, familiar to many booklovers — Britton even played himself in Woody Allen’s 1976 film The Front. Burt Britton had assembled a remarkable collection of writers’ self-portraits (nearly 600 pieces), of which he published a catalogue, Self-Portrait: Book People Picture Themselves. This wonderful collection was sold at auction in 2009.

The importance of the stories in Laughable Loves did not escape Philip Roth, who contacted Kundera directly through his publisher to offer to write the preface.

Fine condition.