Book Review: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I finished The Unbearable Lightness of Being emotionally wrung out and profoundly irritated, wondering when exactly cheating started qualifying as a philosophical stance. This novel has the audacity to dress male selfishness in metaphysical language and then ask women—both in the story and reading it—to nod along like this is depth, not damage.

I related painfully to Tereza. I cried more than I expected. And then I spent the rest of the book watching Tomas do whatever the hell he wanted while the narrative gently patted his head and whispered, “But he’s complex.” Calling selfishness “lightness” doesn’t make it profound—it just makes it pretentious.

Yes, the book is well-written. Yes, it’s intellectually ambitious. And no, none of that excuses how emotionally exhausting it is to see a woman suffer so a man can feel existentially free. I don’t believe women’s pain should be the admission fee for male “philosophy.”

The novel desperately wants us to see Tomas as a man of “lightness,” someone bravely rejecting obligation, emotional weight, and permanence. Strip away the intellectual perfume, and what’s left is painfully ordinary: a man who cheats repeatedly, harms consistently, and remains centered as fascinating, understandable, and worthy of endless empathy.

Tomas isn’t cruel in loud, obvious ways—and that’s precisely why he’s unbearable. He just keeps choosing himself. Over and over. And the narrative keeps framing this as existential freedom rather than what it actually is: emotional negligence with a PhD.

Tereza, meanwhile, feels everything in her body. Her sensitivity, her need to be chosen fully, her way of experiencing love and betrayal viscerally rather than intellectually—it was uncomfortably familiar. Watching her love Tomas wasn’t romantic; it was exhausting. She adapts, waits, and suffers. And the book keeps asking us to understand him.

That imbalance is what made this novel emotionally draining for me.

Let’s be honest! To me, Tomas is a sex addict who cheats on his wife daily, thinking he’s a philosopher. Even Franz is a cheater, despite being portrayed as a romantic idealist. Yet, this book wants you to sympathize with selfish men and aestheticize women’s suffering as high art. It’s not profound or daring. It’s emotionally abusive behavior wrapped in a velvet glove labeled “existential insight.”

And then there’s the misogyny. It’s not subtle. Women’s bodies are fragmented, ranked, eroticized, and reduced to parts. Sabina, in particular, doesn’t read like a woman so much as a projection: an eroticized symbol of freedom, humiliation, and rebellion, conveniently designed to serve male fantasy.

And let’s talk about those fantasies, because WOW!
Describing a random woman as:

“a woman of about thirty with a very pretty face. She had two unbelievably large, pendulous breasts hanging from her shoulders, bouncing at the slightest movement.”

Why? Why was this necessary? What was this adding, besides the author’s very personal interests?

And then we get this gem, courtesy of Sabina’s inner life (or rather, Kundera’s):

“While she was looking at herself in the mirror excited by her self-denigration, she had a fantasy of Thomas seating her on the toilet in her bowler hat and watching her void her bowels.”

I’m sorry, what?!

And just in case you thought that was the bottom, we also get the disturbingly specific fixation on another random woman’s butthole described as a “healthy orb.”
Oh Jesus! What a book!

At some point, this stops being provocative and starts being creepy. These moments don’t feel like bold literary exploration; they feel like an author indulging himself and daring readers—especially women—to call it genius instead of what it is: objectification dressed up as depth.

I didn’t hate this book. I didn’t love it either. Mostly, I felt tired. I felt sorry for Tereza. I watched Tomas cheat, rationalize, and be excused by philosophy. Again and again.

Calling selfishness “lightness” doesn’t make it deep. It just makes it pretentious and exhausting.
And it’s emotionally draining when one side carries all the weight, so the other can feel light.

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