I love all of Kundera’s books but this is the one I think is the most beautiful and sensual and relevant. His analysis of the use of memories and the discarding of them provided me with many concepts for my political work. Kundera is from a communist country so the way he lived with a regime he was forced to live under when he was younger is central to the construction of this book. It was the start of my trying to look at politics in a way that was poetic, emotional, and human rather than dogmatic.