Prague0% in

Tomas

Tomas and Tereza's flat

Prague

The surgeon Tomas and the waitress Tereza set up house in a Prague flat, sharing it with the dog Karenin. Their domestic life, his affairs and her jealousy, is the intimate weight the novel keeps setting against the huge public weight of the occupation. Kundera keeps the address vague, so the flat stands for the private Prague the tanks could not quite reach.

Part One, Lightness and Weight

inferredKundera never gives the couple a street address. Their life together plays out in an ordinary Prague flat above the old core, so this marks a representative point in the central residential district, not a documented building.

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Tomas

The Letná plain

Prague

The open plateau of Letná, above the river on the north bank, is the kind of empty Prague space the novel uses for its quieter reckonings, the long walks and second thoughts that follow the couple's return from exile. The plain looks back across the Vltava to the Old Town, and in the Communist years its parade ground carried the weight of official spectacle that the book's private lives resist.

Part Five, Lightness and Weight

explicitNamed in the book.

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The invasion, 196820% in

Tomas

Wenceslas Square

The invasion, 1968

In August 1968 the tanks of the Warsaw Pact roll into Prague, and Wenceslas Square becomes the stage of the resistance: crowds, painted-over street signs, young people arguing with the soldiers. Tereza goes out with her camera into the danger, and the invasion turns her private restlessness into a public act. The long boulevard-square is the symbolic heart of the Czech capital, then and in 1989.

Part Two, Soul and Body

explicitNamed in the book.

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Tomas

Charles Bridge and the Old Town

The invasion, 1968

The medieval stone bridge and the Old Town it leads into are the streets Tereza roams with her camera during the occupation, photographing soldiers and crowds along the Vltava. The bridge, lined with baroque statues, is the oldest crossing of the river and the seam between the Old Town and the castle side, the Prague the couple move through before exile.

Part Two, Soul and Body

explicitNamed in the book.

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Tereza's dream80% in

Tomas

Petřín Hill

Tereza's dream

The wooded hill on the left bank, crowned with its slender lookout tower, is the setting of one of Tereza's recurring dreams, a strange gentle nightmare in which people walk up the hill to be shot at their own request. Petřín, a real park above the city, becomes the novel's image of a death that is offered as mercy and of Tereza's fear that her own life weighs nothing.

Part Four, Soul and Body

explicitNamed in the book.

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Exile100% in

Tomas

Zurich

Exile

After the invasion Tomas takes a hospital post in Zurich, and the couple leave Prague for Switzerland. Exile exposes the difference between them: Tomas can carry his lightness anywhere, while Tereza cannot bear a life cut loose from home. Her decision to go back, and his to follow, is the hinge of the novel, the choice of weight over lightness.

Part Two / Part Five

explicitKundera names Zurich as the couple's city of exile but gives no address; this marks the historic centre of the city as a representative point. Set outsideSetting because it lies beyond the Prague bounding box, a deliberate excursion to Switzerland.

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