Laughable Loves is a collection of short stories by the writer Milan Kundera. According to Czech Radio, the author regards it as the beginning of his work, and it arose from the realisation that adulthood means being able to step back from the world and see its laughability.[1]
Origin and form of the collection
According to his own words in an interview from 2008, Kundera wrote the first short story of his life, I, the Mournful God, in 1958, when he was 29, in one or two days as a break from work on the play The Owners of the Keys.[1] Of the original ten stories the author later dropped three, among them this one, so it is missing from the final book version.[1]
Radio adaptation
Czech Radio Brno prepared an audio version of the whole collection, which was worked on from 1992, when Kundera read an excerpt from The Golden Apple of Eternal Desire in Paris. It was completed sixteen years later, in 2008.[1] The radio version contains eight stories, one more than the last book edition, because the author released I, the Mournful God for the radio adaptation as well.[1] It was directed by Antonín Přidal, and the stories were read by Igor Bareš, Ladislav Lakomý, František Derfler, Jan Kolařík and Přidal himself. The author set the condition that nothing but the spoken word would be heard in the uncut stories.[1]
The station Vltava broadcast the story The Golden Apple of Eternal Desire in the author's own interpretation on 1 April 2014 and made the other stories from the radio version available on its website for fourteen days.[1]
Sources
- Český rozhlas — 15 April 2014