The Honors College

American-born Gogol, the son of Indian immigrants, wants to fit in among his fellow New Yorkers, despite his family’s unwillingness to let go of their traditional ways.

Summer is winding down, which means it is time for the last meeting of our Milan Kundera Book Club, a series of events exploring the work of the Czech writer whose books became an international phenomenon. During the Soviet domination of Czechoslovakia, Kundera reminded the world of his native country’s central place in European culture. He was also drawn to the imagination of France, where he settled in 1975. The cultural form that preoccupied Kundera was the novel. He leaned into its skepticism and comedy to contemplate societies distorted by ideology and vacuousness.

Robert Cremins and Dan Price from the Honors College at the University of Houston will lead us in a lively discussion of The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, which back in late 1980 The New York Times called “the most original book of the season.”