The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is a novel in seven parts, built from linked stories, memories and essayistic passages. Set mainly in Czechoslovakia after 1968 and in exile, it follows ordinary people whose lives are shaped by political pressure, private longing and the erasing of the past. Kundera considers how states rewrite history, how individuals forget, and the different kinds of laughter. It is a daring, inventive work of modern fiction.