The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Czech: Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí) is a 1984 novel by Milan Kundera, about two women, two men, a dog, and their lives in the 1968 Prague Spring period of Czechoslovak history.

[1] The same year, it was translated to English from Czech by Michael Henry Heim and excerpts of it were published in The New Yorker.

It explores the artistic and intellectual life of Czech society from the Prague Spring of 1968 to the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union and three other Warsaw Pact countries and its aftermath through the lives of two separate pairs of people and those around them.

In Constance Garnett's translation of Tolstoy's War and Peace she gives us the phrase "strange lightness of being" during the description of Prince Andrey's death.

[3] Quoting Kundera from the book: The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.

[4]In the novel, Nietzsche's concept is attached to an interpretation of the German adage einmal ist keinmal 'one occurrence is not significant'; namely, an "all-or-nothing" cognitive distortion that Tomáš must overcome in his hero's journey.

[6] In 1988, an American-made film adaptation of the novel was released starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Lena Olin and Juliette Binoche and directed by Philip Kaufman.