The Farewell Party

First UK edition. 8vo. Pp. [vi], 209. Cream cloth boards, lettered in gilt to spine. Jacket design by Lidia Ferrara (priced £3.95 to front flap).

Translated from the Czech by Peter Kussi. Author's fourth fiction book. Banned in his home country, it was originally published in a French translation in 1976 as La Valse Aux Adieux, by Éditions Gallimard. Written in 1972, the Czech original, Valčík na rozloučenou, wasn't published until 1979, by '68 Publishers, Toronto.

At a peaceful, self-contained fertility spa, a doctor cures his childless patients from his private sperm bank. Kundera has resided in France, his second homeland, since 1975 and his most recent novels have all been written in the French language. "A rare comic writer... Kundera commits some of the funniest literary savaging since Evelyn Waugh." –John Skow, TIME