Milan Kundera: Czech writer dies aged 94

Czech-born French writer Milan Kundera has died at the age of 94, public broadcaster Czech Television reported on Wednesday. 

The award-winning author was renowned for novels delving into the thoughts, feelings and beliefs of the individual, as well as sex and relationships.

In his masterpiece "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," Kundera told the story of a love triangle against the backdrop of the Prague Spring. The epic turned Kundera into an international literary star when it was published in 1984.

By then, the dissident Czech novelist had been living in exile in Paris for almost a decade. His books had been banned in Czechoslovakia, and after the Soviet-backed Communist government deprived him of citizenship in 1978, he remained the country's most famous exiled writer.

After the Velvet Revolution, the fall of the Iron Curtain and the creation of the Czech Republic, the writer never returned to live in his homeland. "There is no such dream of a return," he once said in an interview with German weekly Die Zeit. "I took my Prague with me; the smell, the taste, the language, the landscape, the culture."

Kundera's novels started being published in the Czech language from the 1990s, but "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" was not released in his native land until 2006.

Socialist theatrics

Born on April 1, 1929 in Brno, Czechoslovakia, Milan Kundera was not only influenced by Czech culture, but even more by coming into his own as a writer during socialism.

As a high school graduate, he enthusiastically joined the Communist Party in 1948; two years later, he was expelled because of "hostile thinking and individualistic tendencies." This had consequences: Kundera had to break off his studies at the Film Academy, where he studied music and literature and had only just begun.

He made his debut as a writer in 1953 with the poetry collection "Man: A Wide Garden." In it, he dealt with socialist realism, albeit from a Communist perspective. He later re-joined the Communist Party — and was once again expelled. It was a difficult relationship.

The "individualistic tendencies" that the CP accused him of when he was expelled for the first time became a sticking point in the 1960s. Kundera wrote humorous stories and in 1967 his first novel, "The Joke," was published.

Following the violent suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968, which he spoke out against, the author became a persona non grata. As an advocate of reform communism, he was expelled from the Association of Writers in 1969 and again from the party in 1970; his teaching activities at the Film Academy were suspended, his plays were removed from the repertoire, his publications banned and his books were removed from book stores for sale.

French exile

Kundera continued to write in spite of the censors. He reckoned with his communist past in "Life is Elsewehere" (1973) and in "The Farewell Waltz" (1972 original title, "The Farewell Party"). The author knew that these works would not be published in Czechoslovakia. Instead, they debuted in France, the country which offered him refuge in 1975 and a teaching assignment in Rennes and later in Paris.

From his life in exile, Kundera continued to push his literary themes, further using a Czechoslovak backdrop for his works. As he had already been expelled from the country when "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" appeared in 1978, the socialist leadership in his homeland was left only with the possibility of revoking the writer's citizenship.

In 1984, Kundera published "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"; the book landed on best-seller lists worldwide and made Kundera a star. The novel was later adapted into a successful movie, with Juliette Binoche and Daniel Day Lewis in the leading roles.

With the world's growing interest for life behind the Iron Curtain, it was the right book at the right time.

Although his later works like "Immortality" (1990) also found attention, their success was not as great. Some literary critics considered these novels too philosophical and essayistic; others praised the author as a pioneering moralist, a critic of Western European civilization and postmodernism.

A traitor?

Once again, socialism caught up with the writer in 2008 when the accusation was lobbed that Kundera had betrayed an opposition member in 1950, who then disappeared for several years in a labor camp. A Czech secret police protocol allegedly provided proof.

But was it really Kundera who made this statement? Or had someone else impersonated Milan Kundera? "I'm completely surprised by something I didn't expect, something I didn't even know about yesterday, something that didn't happen," the writer told a Czech news agency. In fact, his signature is missing under the document.

Kundera stopped publicly commenting on his past and would travel to the Czech Republic incognito to visit his friends. As an act of reconciliation, former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis restored his Czech citizenship in 2019.

A last festival of insignificance

In 2014, after a decade-long break, Kundera published a new novel, "The Festival of Insignificance." In it, four men stroll through Paris, telling — in the well-known humorous and tragic Kundera style — about personal obstacles. The long-awaited book was a hit throughout Europe, although critics were divided. Some praised the novel as a "masterpiece," while others spoke of a "cramped work of old age." Just like "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," he dealt with some of his favorite themes: sexuality, philosophy, with characters pondering on the irony and insignificance of life.  

This article was originally written in German.