‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ author Milan Kundera, who warned of the dangers of Russia, has died aged 94.
Satirist and communist outcast Milan Kundera passed away aged 94
The acclaimed Czech-born French fiction writer and communist outcast passed away on Wednesday (11.07.23), at home in Paris, according to the Moravian Library in Brno.
A statement by the library read: “Milan Kundera, a Czech-French author who is among the world’s most translated authors, died on July 11, 2023, in his Paris apartment.”
Kundera, who lived a largely secluded life, went into exile in France in 1975, acquiring citizenship in 1981.
His Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked in 1979 but he was granted Czech citizenship in 2019.
Although he was born in Czechoslovakia, he considered himself a French writer and was insistent that his French literature be studied in and classified as French.
Perhaps his most noted work, ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ is set amidst the Soviet invasion that destroyed the 1968 Prague Spring.
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He was known for using satire to describe the absurdities of life, honing in on totalitarianism, the difficult relationship with his homeland, and the control Moscow had over Czechoslovakia and neighbouring countries.
His death comes amid the continued conflict between Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Ukraine.
In a 1983 essay, Kundera poignantly penned: “In central Europe, the eastern border of the west, everybody has always been particularly sensitive to the dangers of Russian might.”
On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell as the head of the East German Communist Party announced that citizens of the GDR could cross the border whenever they pleased.
After then, Kundera rarely returned to the Czech Republic. However, he denied claims made in 2008 by the Czech publication Respekt that he had been an informer for the Communist Party in the 1950s.
He joined the Communist Party as a teen and his early poetry contained socialist views.
However, he ended up getting expelled from the party in 1950, before getting reinstated six years later, and getting ousted again in 1970.
His dismissal ended up providing the inspiration for his debut novel, 1967’s ‘The Joke’, about the cruelness of Czech life under Communism. However, it was banned there a year after it was published, as were a number of his texts.
After they reinstated his citizenship four years ago, his native country awarded the scribe the prestigious Franz Kafka prize – an international literary award presented in honour of the Jewish, Bohemian, German-language novelist.
In his birthplace of Brno, there is a library boasting an archive dedicated to Kundera.
