An intriguing footnote to undera’s unquenchable lightness of being

Milan Kundera’s first novel in more than a decade begins with an extended bout of navel-gazing. A man called Alain walks through the streets of Paris, noting that every young woman he sees has her belly-button on display. This prompts him to ask the thorny question: “How to define the eroticism of a man (or an era) that sees female seductiveness as centred in ...