The love story of Tomas and Tereza is set against the background of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 Tomas, a divorced surgeon, is a compulsive womaniser who finds the real love which Tereza gives him quite difficult to accept - a story which investigates the difference between sex and love and the ultimate mystery of being itself - and of death The infidelities and weaknesses of the characters parallel wider national events such as the humiliation of Dubcek