In this dark farce of a novel set in an oldfashioned Central European spa town eight characters are swept up as in an accelerating dance a pretty nurse and her ... » 

In this dark farce of a novel set in an oldfashioned Central European spa town eight characters are swept up as in an accelerating dance a pretty nurse and her repairman boyfriend an oddball gynecologist a rich American at once saint and Don Juan a popular trumpeter and his beautiful obsessively jealous wife an unillusioned former political prisoner about to leave his country and his young woman ward. Perhaps the most brilliantly plotted and sheerly entertaining of Milan Kunderas novels Farewell Waltz poses the most serious questions with a blasphemous lightness that makes us see that the modern world has deprived us even of the right to tragedy. «