All too often, this brilliant novel of thwarted love and revenge miscarried has been read for its political implications. Now, a quarter century after <I>The Joke</I> was first published and several years after the collapse of the Soviet-imposed Czechoslovak regime, it becomes easier to put such implications into perspective in favor of valuing the book (and all Kundera &#39;s work) as what it truly is: great, stirring literature that sheds new light on the eternal themes of human existence. <P> The present edition provides English-language readers an important further means toward revaluation of <I>The Joke</I>. For reasons he describes in his Author&#39;s Note, Milan Kundera devoted much time to creating (with the assistance of his American publisher-editor) a completely revised translation that reflects his original as closely as any translation possibly can: reflects it in its fidelity not only to the words and syntax but also to the characteristic dictions and tonalities of the novel&#39;s narrators. The result is nothing less than the restoration of a classic.