In this entertaining and stimulating essay, one of world literature's most distinctive thinkers sets out his personal view of the history and value of the novel in Western civilization. Too often, Kundera suggests, a novel is thought about only within the confines of the language and nation of its origin, when in fact what makes a novel matter is its ability to reveal some previously unknown aspect of our existence. Kundera describes how the best novels, from Don Quixote to Ulysses and Madame Bovary to The Trial, do just that.