The Book of Laughter and Forgetting Character Roles

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting doesn't have a traditional novelistic structure. Kundera is playing with the musical idea of variations on a theme, which means that each part of the book is a mostly self-contained narrative. As such, each part of the book has its own set of characters and narrative situations. All of this is to say that we don't have a static set of protagonists, antagonists, and so on. Each part of the book might have its own set of characters filling these roles.

But then again, it might not. Kundera isn't very interested in exploring conventional role assignments for his characters; he's more interested in getting to the heart of their experiences so that he can fully explore his most pressing thematic concerns.