Through his writing, Milan Kundera attempted to capture the absurdity and allure of life, based on his own experiences of losing his Czech identity due to his opposition.



Through Agence France-Presse: Author of "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and other gloomy, thought-provoking works that probed the mystery of the human condition, Milan Kundera passed away on Wednesday, according to a spokeswoman for the Milan Kundera Library in his hometown of Brno. He was 94.

She informed AFP: "Unfortunately, I can report that Mr. Milan Kundera passed away yesterday (Tuesday) after a protracted illness.

Drawing on his own experiences of having his Czech nationality taken away for dissent, Kundera sought to portray all that is captivating and ludicrous about life through his distinctive humor and beautiful language.

Life, he claimed in his critical book "Art of the Novel" (1986), "is a trap we've always known: we are born without having asked to be, locked in a body we never chose, and destined to die."

On April 1, 1929, a young revolutionary named Kundera was born in Brno, then a part of Czechoslovakia. His dad was a well-known pianist. While pursuing his studies in Prague, he joined the Communist Party, translated French poet Apollinaire, and produced his own poetry.

He also taught at a school for filmmakers, where one of his pupils was Milos Forman, who would later win an Oscar.

Even though Kundera claimed to be a committed communist, his writing's individual character soon landed him into problems.

He was kicked out of the party in 1950, returned in 1956, and was again kicked out in 1970, when the Prague Spring reform movement, in which he was thought to have played a role, was put down.

The 1967 publication of Kundera's debut book, "The Joke," a work of dark humor criticizing the one-party system, resulted in a ban on his writing in Czechoslovakia and elevated him to fame in his native country.

He and his wife Vera fled to France in 1975, where he served as an assistant professor at the University of Rennes for four years. In 1979, their Czech nationality was revoked.

His popularity and success in his chosen country, where he was granted citizenship in 1981, developed as translations of his books were published. One such book was "Life is Elsewhere" (1973), which was set in Czechoslovakia and was about a poet who was captured by the Communist government.

The concept of forgetting in politics, history, and everyday life was humorously addressed in "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" (1979) through seven interconnected vignettes.

According to the New York Times in 1980, the book was "brilliant and original," "written with a purity and wit that invite us directly in; it is also strange, with a strangeness that locks us out."

Kundera was a writer who was "fascinated by sex, and prone to sudden, if graceful, skips into autobiography, abstract rumination, and recent Czech history," according to John Updike, a reviewer for the Times.

His 1984 publication "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" later became a 1987 motion picture starring Juliette Binoche and Daniel Day-Lewis, and is by far his most well-known piece.

The Prague Spring and the exile that followed are the backdrop for this morality story about freedom and passion on both a personal and societal level.

NO RETURNING?

Following his exile in France, Kundera's detractors claim that he turned his back on fellow Czechs and dissidents.

He was accused of being a police informant under Communist rule in 2008 by a Czech magazine, which he dismissed as "pure lies."

After a 13-year sabbatical, Kundera released his first novel in 2013.

Five friends in Paris are the subject of "The Festival of Insignificance," which earned negative and positive reviews, with The Atlantic praising its "near-impenetrable irony" and The Guardian calling it a "stinker."

According to the New York Times, what Kundera "has to tell us seems to have less relevance." You can't help but wonder how his development would have changed if he had remained in Czechoslovakia or stayed there for a longer period of time.

His nationality was reinstated by the Czech Republic in 2019, and his birthplace of Brno saw the opening of the Milan Kundera Library in 2023.