The Unbearable Lightness of Being | Summary
Part 1: Lightness and Weight
The novel opens with a meditation on philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's idea of the eternal return, contrasted with the notion of einmal ist keinmal; that is, "what happens but once ... might as well not have happened at all." According to Nietzsche, eternal return is the "heaviest of burdens." The absence of this burden, however, renders life inconsequential. The binary opposition of weight and lightness continues throughout the book.
Kundera next introduces Tomas, a surgeon who has fallen in love with a young woman named Tereza....
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