The Term: The concept of living in physical or spiritual form for a potentially infinite length of time.
What form an unending or indefinitely-long human life would take, or whether the soul possesses immortality, has been the subject of much speculation, fantasy, and debate. (Dictionary meaning)
The Book: When the mirage of life, death and man’s indefinite attachment to these two phenomena creates every plausible and implausible ripple in the mind, a piece of work like Czech born Milan Kundera''s Immortality comes into design. While the yarn has been spun around two central characters Agnes and Laura and the man in their lives, Paul; the story dissolves into several layers of historical fiction. And these multiple layers include a post mortal conversation between Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Ernest Hemingway, and an in-depth analysis of Bettina Von Arnim’s association with Goethe. Both of which eventually open up inroads to understand the nature of and man’s craving for immortality.
The novel starts with a first person narrative where the author is overwhelmed by a certain expression on the face of an old lady while she is waving to her swimming instructor. Kundera somehow is reminded of the name Agnes after this incident of profound imagery, which again seems to be work of fiction, and gets engrossed in the name and the persona that he creates around it. He decides to transcend his infatuation into a novel called Immortality. So immortal was that image in his mind! He also chooses another character called Professor Avenarius to come as a smooth connect in the fiction and the woven up non fiction in the story. However, he came across as a manifestation of Kundera’s innermost self.
The Author: Milan Kundera is a Czech-born writer who settled in France. His most famous works are The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Book of Laughter and forgetting amongst others.