H o w t o R e a d L i t e r a t u r e1 1 6them the signs of some sinisterly concealed narrative. Othello does
this with Desdemona’s handkerchief, which he misreads as a token
of her sexual infidelity. It also happens in The Book of Laughter and
Forgetting by Milan Kundera, who lived for some years under a
Communist regime in Eastern Europe. Since such regimes are
constantly spying on their citizens, perpetually on the look- out for
the slightest flicker of dissidence, they qualify as paranoid. As
with paranoia, nothing that happens can happen by accident.
Everything must have some portentous significance. In Kundera’s
story, a character is being sick in the centre of communist Prague,
and another character strolls up and gazes down at him. ‘I know
exactly what you mean,’ he murmurs sympathetically.