The Farewell Waltz

Milan Kundera · 1976 CE · Novel · Czech · Contemporary

A famous trumpeter is telephoned by a nurse at a fertility spa to say she is pregnant by him after one night, and he drives out to talk her round. Over five days the spa collects a gynaecologist with a private theory of treatment, an American mystic, a girl watched by the police, and a disgraced political scientist carrying a poison pill he has kept twenty years for himself. Kundera built it as a farce in five acts, the last thing he wrote before leaving Czechoslovakia.

Open The Farewell Waltz in the archive — filters, lineage graph and full facet browsing.

Attributes

Closest analogues

• A Serious Man
  Ethan Coen, Joel Coen · 2009 CE · Film

  63% · 14 shared
  SatireTragicomedyGuilt & ConscienceFreedom vs FateExistential AbsurdityContemporaryTricksterEverymanWise FoolIronic Reversalvs SelfIronicComicAbsurdist
• Laughable Loves
  Milan Kundera · 1969 CE · Short Story

  58% · 14 shared
  ComedySatireLoveExistential AbsurdityContemporaryTricksterWise FoolIronic ReversalMistaken Identityvs Personvs SelfIronicComicCzech
• Jacques the Fatalist
  Denis Diderot · 1796 CE · Novel

  54% · 12 shared
  NovelComedySatireLoveFreedom vs FateExistential AbsurdityTricksterEverymanWise Foolvs SelfIronicComic
• Airplane!
  Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker · 1980 CE · Film

  53% · 12 shared
  ComedySatireLoveExistential AbsurdityContemporaryTricksterEverymanWise FoolIronic Reversalvs SelfComicAbsurdist
• Sideways
  Alexander Payne · 2004 CE · Film

  51% · 12 shared
  TragicomedyLoveGuilt & ConscienceContemporaryTricksterEverymanIronic ReversalThe Feastvs Personvs SelfIronicComic
• Leonce and Lena
  Georg Büchner · 1836 CE · Play

  49% · 11 shared
  ComedySatireLoveExistential AbsurdityTricksterWise FoolMistaken Identityvs SelfIronicComicAbsurdist