I'll tell you something: He lived in Geneva, when Calvin was its lord, a clever and joking boy. His notebooks, filled with jokes about Jesus Christ and the Bible, fell into the hands of the authorities. No doubt this boy, who was so much like you, must have wondered: Is there anything to be angry about? After all, he hadn't done anything wrong, he was joking, that's all. Hate? He never knew it. He had known, no doubt, only sarcasm and indifference, and he was executed. Oh, don't think I'm a supporter of such cruelty! I simply want to say that any great movement that wants to transform the world does not tolerate sarcasm or mockery, because they are rust that eats away at everything. It is a novel about the individual's struggle with the party establishment, when this establishment is narrow-minded and eliminates the individual's margin of freedom, through its ideological hegemony and its one-sided vision. In an analytical, satirical style, Kundera narrates the tragic condition of the person trapped within a circle of the Stalinist legacy under the socialist regime in Czechoslovakia