Laughable Loves

Laughable Loves is a collection of stories that first appeared in print in Prague before 1968 but was subsequently banned. The seven stories are all concerned with love, or instead with the complex erotic games and stratagems employed by women, especially men, as they try to come to terms with needs and impulses that can start a terrifying train of events. Sexual attraction is shown as a game that often turns sour, an experience that brings painful insights and releases uncertainty, panic, vanity, and a constant need for reassurance. Thus a young couple on holiday starts a game of pretense that threatens to destroy their relationship; two middle-aged men go in search of girls they don't really want, and a young man renews contact with an older woman who feels humiliated by her aging body, an elderly doctor uses his beautiful wife to increase his attraction and minister to his sexual vanity.

In Laughable Loves, Milan Kundera shows himself, once again, as a master of fiction's most graceful illusions and surprises.