The Art of Memory in Exile Vladimir Nabokov and Milan Kundera Hana Píchová   December 2001 160 pages, 6 x 9 ISBN 0-8093-2396-6, $35.00s cloth World Literature “This is the first comparative study of the two great figures of international late modernism, Vladimir Nabokov and Milan Kundera. By examining the problems of literal and figurative displacements that are symptomatic of the waning years of the previous century, Píchová provides a broader context for understanding these two writers whose work soars beyond the narrow frameworks of Russian and Czech literature. It is an important and timely work, which will shed light on the very important questions concerning the cultural identity of the East Central European periphery.” —Tomislav Longinovic, author of Borderland Culture: The Politics of Identity in Four Twentieth-Century Slavic Novels In The Art of Memory in Exile, Hana Píchová explores the themes of memory and exile in selected novels of Vladimir Nabokov and Milan Kundera. Both writers, Píchová argues, stress how personal and cultural memory serves as a creative means of overcoming the artist’s and exile’s loss of homeland. In their virtuoso displays of literary talent, Nabokov and Kundera showcase the strategies that allow their protagonists to succeed as émigrés: a creative fusing of past and present through the prism of the imagination.   Píchová closely analyzes two novels by each author: the first written in exile (Nabokov's Mary and Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting) and a later, pivotal novel in each writer's career (Nabokov's The Gift and Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being). In all four texts, these authors explore how the kaleidoscope of personal and cultural memory confronts a fragmented and untenable present, contrasting the lives of fictional émigrés who fail to bridge the gap between past and present with those émigrés whose rich artistic vision allows them to transcend the trials of homelessness.   By juxtaposing these novels and their authors, Píchová provides a unique perspective on each writer's vast appeal and success. She finds that in the work of Nabokov and Kundera, the most successful exiles express a vision that transcends both national and temporal boundaries.   Hana Píchová is an associate professor of Slavic languages and literatures, University of Texas at Austin.