Ludvik returns to his hometown a bitter man with a single aim: to do unto others what has been done to him. Expelled from the Communist Party as a student for a youthful joke, he has spent years exiled to a bleak labour camp. awaiting his chance for revenge on those who betrayed him - and one-time friends, lovers and comrades soon become entwined in his machinations as he devises the perfect plan. Kundera's iconoclastic debut novel was a sensation during the Prague Spring: later banned, it launched his worldwide literary reputation, and its passionate exploration of humour, censorship and individualism is even more powerful over half a century later.