appeal, leaving her without a true sense of self. In the final chapters, Jean-Marc loses sight of Chantal in a crowded subway, this literally and figuratively shows how Chantal has lost herself in a crowd of strangers. Vision and perception Visual perception of someone at any one moment is taken as the defining sign of their identity within this novel. This creates a precarious and ephemeral sense of identity that gives the impression of shifting with the light. Critical reception Due to the relative obscurity of this novel in Kundera's oeuvre, the critical receptions are limited to reviews at the time of the publication, 1998. The general response to the novel seeks to compare it to Kundera's more famous novels, specifically The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Due to Identity'''s very different stylistic choices and linear narrative, the book is very different to these earlier successes, challenging what readers expected from a Kundera novel. Newspaper reviewers with a general or non academic audience referenced the book's lack of character development and minimal characters and plot overall. Reviewers from the New York Times and The Guardian'' looked more favourably at the simple narrative and complex philosophical questions, these reviewers also looked at the narrative form as an intentional way of reflecting the confusion of the plot. References 1998 Czech novels Novels by Milan Kundera French-language novels 20th-century Czech novels HarperCollins books