A novel of ideas and love. It is a good novel, but very much of its time in its self-referentiality. All of it set against a background of the communist repression in Czechoslovakia. Recommended. There is definitely a Czech style to novels. Perhaps not quite as good as it is meant to be, but still worth reading. It is maybe all a bit too clever and becomes involved with its own status as a text so much that that can get in the way and descend into a kind of noodling, but certainly well worth reading.
