Milan Kundera, Le rideau, Paris, Gallimard, 2005, 196 p.

« Un rideau magique, tissé de légendes, était suspendu devant le monde. Cervantes envoya don Quichotte en voyage et déchira le rideau. Le monde s’ouvrit devant le chevalier errant dans toute la nudité comique de sa prose… … c’est en déchirant le rideau de la préinterprétation que Cervantes a mis en route cet art nouveau ; son geste destructeur se reflète et se prolonge dans chaque roman digne de ce nom ; c’est le signe d’identité de l’art du roman. »
(Quatrième de couverture)

UNGAR, Steven, « Kundera’s Variations: Passing Thoughts on Novel and Nation », South Central Review: The Journal of the South Central Modern Language Association, vol. 25, n° 3 (automne 2008), p. 57-67. +++ Article de revue

### Abstract
The appearance of Milan Kundera’s ‘Die Weltliteratur’ in the January 8, 2007 issue of The New Yorker provides broad journalistic visibility for a writer more often associated with elite literary venues. That the article in question was excerpted from The Curtain, a new collection of critical essays on the novel, links it to two earlier collections, The Art of the Novel (1986) and Legacies Betrayed (1993), in which Kundera had set forth a defense of major European writers including Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne, Laclos, Diderot, Stendhal, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Proust. What sets ‘Die Weltliteratur’ apart from the earlier collection is a recent poll in the French press whose ranking of influential writers prompts Kundera to assert his Bohemian roots against his current status as a citizen of France. The new collection also positions Kundera as an interested observer whose longtime residency in his adoptive homeland provides a unique perspective on the culture, politics, and history of his native region. A final section relates Kundera’s views in ‘Die Weltliteratur’ and in The Curtain to the life of the author’s colleague and friend, Professor Walter A. Strauss (1923-2008).

Ungar, 2008, PDF ###