A woman begins to suspect she is becoming invisible. A man becomes consumed by the fear of losing her.

From this deceptively simple premise, Milan Kundera constructs one of his most intimate and unsettling novels: a meditation on love, jealousy, ageing and the fragile identities we create in order to be recognised by others.

Set largely in contemporary France, Identity strips away much of the historical and political canvas associated with Kundera's earlier work to focus on the territory between two people. Anonymous letters, imagined admirers, misunderstandings and private fantasies gradually blur the boundary between reality and projection. As in his finest fiction, Kundera is interested in how desire alters perception. The novel becomes a philosophical investigation into a question that sounds simple until it isn't: how well can we ever know the person we love?

Originally written in French following Kundera's departure from Czechoslovakia, Identity belongs to the later phase of his career alongside Slowness and Ignorance. These novels are smaller in scale than The Unbearable Lightness of Being, but often stranger and more distilled, concerned with memory, chance, eroticism and the hidden mechanics of intimacy.

First UK edition, first printing. Faber & Faber, 1998. Hardback with dust jacket. Very good condition, with light shelf wear and a clean, tightly bound interior.