Jacques the Fatalist & His Master by Diderot

Kundera in The Art of the Novel, writing of unexplored avenues of the novel, writes of Jacques le Fataliste as being one of "the two greatest novelistic works of the eighteenth century, two novels conceived as grand fames. They reach heights of playfulness, of lightness, never scaled before or since" (p. 15).

Jacques the Fatalist is a novel unlike any I have read before, it is Diderot's elaborate joke, a story of stories interrupted by stories and impossible circumstances that prolong the eventual conclusion. 

Diderot's presence is felt throughout the novel, and he teases the readers, putting on full display his powers as a novelist who joyfully constructs the novel according to his prerogatives. It felt quite liberating to read Jacque le Fataliste, as an extended exploration of possibilities. 

I could definitely sense Kundera's own debt to Diderot in his own firm authorial presence, and I think that Italo Calvino may also have been thinking of Jacques le Fataliste while writing If on a winter's night a traveler. There is the same second person narratorial reference to the novel's readers, and the same meta-narrative structure.

I could not understand the philosophical point that Diderot was attempting to convey, I do not know what kind of conversations philosophers were having about free will vs determinism.
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