ndĕr`ə), 1929–, Czech-born novelist and essayist. His first novel, The Joke (1967, tr. 1974), brought him government disapproval and resulted in the loss of his citizenship. This, coupled with the 1968 Soviet invasion, prompted him to flee Czechoslovakia; he settled (1975) in France, where he became a citizen in 1980. Often set against a totalitarian backdrop yet usually apolitical in tone, his widely translated fiction looks ironically at love, sex, and the possibility of spiritual fulfillment in the modern age. His works frequently treat themes of exile and return, memory and forgetfulness, nostalgia and regret. Kundera's most acclaimed novels are The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (tr. 1980, 1996) and The Unbearable Lightness of Being (tr. 1984). Among Kundera's other novels are Life Is Elsewhere (tr. 1974, 2000) and Immortality (1990, tr. 1991), both written in Czech; and Slowness (1995, tr. 1996), Identity (1997, tr. 1998), and Ignorance (tr. 2002), all originally in French. He has also written plays, short stories, essays, and poetry.
Bibliography
See studies by M. N. Banerjee (1990) and F. Ricard (2003).
Kundera, Milan
(born April 1, 1929, Brno, Czech.) Czech-born French writer. He worked as a jazz musician and taught at Prague's film academy, but he gradually turned to writing. Though a member of the Communist Party for years, his works were banned after he participated in Czechoslovakia's short-lived liberalization movement (1967–68), and he was fired from his teaching positions. He immigrated to France in 1975 and was stripped of his Czech citizenship in 1979; he became a French citizen in 1981. His works combine erotic comedy with political criticism. The Joke (1967), his first novel, describes life under Stalin. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1979), a series of wittily ironic meditations on the modern state, and the novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984; film, 1988) were banned in his homeland until 1989. His later books include Immortality (1990) and Slowness (1994).
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