Laughable Loves

First UK edition. 8vo. Pp. xvi, 242. Dark blue cloth boards lettered in gilt to spine. Dustjacket designed by Charles Shields.

Translated from the Czech by Suzanne Rappaport under Kundera's supervision. With a 10 pp. introduction by Philip Roth. Preceded by the 1974 U.S. Knopf edition. Originally published in 1969 as Směšné lásky by Československý spisovatel, Prague, and subsequently banned. Roth's introduction (in a slightly different form), "The Hitchhiking Game," "Let the Old Dead Make Room for the Young Dead," and "The Golden Apple of Eternal Desire" were originally printed in the April 1974 issue of Esquire Magazine; "Edward and God" was first printed in The American Poetry Review.

Price-clipped dustwrapper, else Fine.

A collection of seven stories all concerned with love and complex erotic games. "Milan Kundera offers a very special blend of sympathy and cynicism, irony and affability, that is unmatched in our literature." –Thomas Joyce, Chicago Sun-Times