This book review was written by Eugene Kernes
Book can be found in:
Collection = The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
Book Club Event = Book List (11/08/2025)
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Review
Is This An Overview?
Tamina works at a café, and has skills that garner the attention of the customers. The customers want to talk to Tamina, because Tamina appears to be listening attentively. Tamina had escaped Russia occupied Czechoslovakia, but wants some notebooks that were left behind. Notebooks in a parcel, hidden in the home of Tamina’s mother-in-law. Tamina cannot go back, but wants the parcel. Tamina attempts various strategies to get someone to go to Czechoslovakia to get Tamina’s parcel. What is Tamina willing to do to have someone get the parcel? Why does the parcel matter to Tamina?
Questions to Consider while Reading the Book
•What is the raison d’etre of the book? For what purpose did the author write the book? Why do people read this book?
•What are some limitations of the book?
•To whom would you suggest this book?
•Who is Tamina?
•Why do people want to talk to Tamina?
•What does Tamina want the parcel?
•Where is the parcel supposed to be?
•What does Tamina’s mother-in-law know about the parcel?
•Why and how did Tamina leave Czechoslovakia?
•How does Tamina attempt to retrieve the parcel?
•Who is Bibi?
•Who is Banaka?
Book Details
Translator: Aaron Asher
Original Language: French
Translated Into: English
Publisher: Perennial Classics [HarperCollins Publishers]
Edition ISBN: 9780063290693
Pages to read: 30
Publication: 2023
1st Edition: 1978
Format: eBook
Ratings out of 5:
Readability 5
Content 3
Overall 3