Kundera always appears to heal my wounds. Wait a second; I don't know if nostalgia is a wound at all. It is like a spring roll's sauce: bittersweet.

I am moving from my parents' house. The place where I was raised, I met a lot of different people; I celebrated my promotions; I played Pokémon cards with my mates; and I joined this forum sitting on the table of my bedroom.

The worst thing is that we leave Madrid for Toledo, and that's a terrible thing. Yet this doesn't affect me because I am very sure that I will live in Madrid again sooner or later.

In Ignorance, Kundera treats themes that could not be more personal and, at the same time, more universal. The novel was published in 2000, and I fully recommend you to read it.

There are two emotional and excellent parts that I believe I am experiencing right now from moving from my house:

The identity of home.

Kundera uses two characters, sending them back to Prague after twenty years living in France. One of them (Josef) decides to go to his childhood home where his brother (who never left the country) still lives there. The ambience between the siblings is complex because there are a lot of feelings arising, but then the question of identity comes up. Josef believes that his brother thinks that he is forgotten by Czech identity and then asks: Am I still a Czech to you?

It is curious, because Josef hasn't had this crisis of identity until he visited his brother at his childhood home.

On my side, I am now experiencing how it feels like to have an 'identity' because I feel I am losing it.

What do you think? Did you feel the same when you left your home or country? Do our homes put the boundaries of our identity?

Odysseus metaphor.

Josef and Irena (the other protagonist) are drawn back to Prague by nostalgia, which Kundera associates with Odysseus and defines as “the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.”

The question the novel poses is whether there can ever really be such a return...

My answer is yes. And yours?