The Joke
In 1950s communist Czechoslovakia, Ludvik Jahn, a promising young Party student, writes a postcard to a girl he is trying to impress. The three sarcastic lines he scribbles, mocking optimism, the Party, and her earnestness, are read by the committee, and his life is rerouted overnight: he is expelled from university, conscripted to a penal battalion in the mines, and shaved of every ambition he had. Years later, released and quietly successful, he sets out to take revenge on the friend who betrayed him by seducing his wife, a plan that goes grotesquely, ironically wrong. Milan Kundera's first novel, published in 1967, is a funny, bitter, multi-voiced study of love, politics, and the way a careless sentence can reshape an entire life under a regime that refuses to laugh.
Themes & atmosphere
Also by Milan Kundera
All works by Milan Kundera →
What you might want to know about The Joke
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
In 1948 Prague, Czech university student Ludvik Jahn writes a teasing postcard to his more devout girlfriend that mocks the optimism of the new regime. The party expels him and sends him to a coal mine punishment unit. Years later, he plans a careful, very small revenge on the man who reported him.
Yes. The Joke (Zert) was Milan Kundera's debut novel, originally published in Czech in 1967. It was banned in Czechoslovakia after the 1968 Prague Spring. Kundera later went on to write The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
The Joke uses multiple narrators and shifts between voices and time periods. The first-person sections are accessible; the structure rewards careful reading. The novel's political satire targets Czechoslovak Stalinism.
The Joke was written by Milan Kundera, published in 1967 by Faber and Faber.
The Joke is 319 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Joke takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
The Joke is a standalone novel by Milan Kundera, not part of a series.
The Joke is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.