There are many jokes in The Joke, Milan Kundera’s recently re-translated first novel.[1] The most extravagant joke of all is the one Kundera plays on his own characters.

It all starts innocently enough: It is 1948, right after the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia. Ludvick is a student at the University, a Party member, and as “unhappy as any woman-less twenty-year-old can be.” His despair is only intensified by an especially attractive comrade named Marketa. All his efforts to become intimate with the girl are defeated by her extraordinary literal-mindedness and impregnable revolutionary enthusiasm. In an attempt to shock Marketa out of her complacency, Ludvick sends her a postcard, as a joke, on which he writes: “Optimism is the opium of the people! A healthy atmosphere stinks of stupidity! Long live Trotsky! Ludvick.”

The secret police, of course, read the card and don’t see the humor. Ludvick must appear before a tribunal. At first he has some reason to be hopeful: Zamenek, a fellow student, has been chosen Party chairman. Zamenek knows Marketa and how tempting it can be to play on her gullibility. He turns out to be an opportunist, however; at the tribunal he delivers a rousing speech recommending Ludvick’s expulsion from the Party. The vote is unanimous against Ludvick. Soon afterward, he is drafted into a military penal battalion, and he spends the remainder of his youth working in the mines.

We learn this story in flashbacks (the time of the novel’s