Testaments Betrayed: An Essay in Nine Parts

Testaments Betrayed is written like a novel: the same characters appear and reappear throughout the nine parts of the book, as do the principal themes that preoccupy the author. Kundera once again celebrates the art of the novel, from its birth in a spirit of humor unique to European culture and sensibility – illustrated by some wonderful examples from the work of Rabelais and Cervantes – through its flowering in successive centuries. He notes the novel’s mysterious kinship with music and the parallel (but not simultaneous) evolution of the two arts in the West, as well as the particular wisdom the novel offers about human existence. The art of translation is the subject of one part of the book, illuminating the significance of its title. Kundera is a passionate defender of the moral rights of the artist and the respect due a work of art and its creator’s wishes. The betrayal of both – often by their most passionate proponents – is on the principal themes of Testaments Betrayed. Testaments Betrayed is a book rich in ideas about the time in which we live and how we have become who we are, about Western culture in general. It is also a personal essay, in which Kunder discusses the experience of exile – and an impassioned attack on the shifting moral judgements and persecutions of art and artist.