A
Quick Overview
Born on April 1, 1929 in Brno, Czechoslovakia. As a novelist, short-story writer, playwright, and poet, Kundera wrote various works combining erotic comedy with political criticism.
"Kundera, Milan" Britannica Online.
<http://www.eb.com:180/cgi-bin/g?DocF=micro/331/7.html>
[Accessed 01 May 1998].
Comments: A brillian author
facinated with the complex relationships between men and women. There is
a strong michious side in all he writes so that one is never sure how serious
to think of him.
His
Life
Links
His
Works The titles in quote marks are the English
translations:
Links
A
Matter of Purging
Review by Anatole Broyard of Milan Kundera's The Joke, published
in The New York Times on Oct. 30, 1982.
Trysts,
Seduction, Pursuit and Life's Little Quirks
Review by Michiko Kakutani of Milan Kundera's Slowness, published
in The New York Times.
Beautifying
Lies and Polyphonic Wisdom
Review by Perry Meisel of Milan Kundera's The Art of the Novel,
published in The New York Times on April 10, 1988.
Red
Rulers and Black Humor
Review by Irving Howe of Milan Kundera's The Joke, published
in The New York Times on Oct. 24, 1982.
The
Unbearable Lightness of Being
Review by Michiko Kakutani of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness
of Being, published in The New York Times on April 2, 1984.
The
Woman of His Dreams
Review by D.M. Thomas of Milan Kundera's Immortality, published
in The New York Times on April 28, 1991.
The
Novel Re-examined in a Novel by Kundera
Review by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt of Milan Kundera's Immortality,
published in The New York Times on May 16, 1991.
Four
Characters Under Two Tyrannies
Review by E.L. Doctorow of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness
of Being, published in The New York Times on April 29, 1984.
Speed
Review by Angeline Goreau of Milan Kundera's Slowness, published
in The New York Times.
On
the Autonomy of Art and How It Is Betrayed
Review by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt of Milan Kundera's Testaments
Betrayed, published in The New York Times on Sept. 21, 1995.
Testaments
Betrayed: An Essay in Nine Parts (excerpt)
Nonfiction by Milan Kundera.
His
Life
The son of a noted concert pianist and musicologist, Ludvik Kundera,
the young Kundera studied music but gradually turned to writing, publishing
his first volume of poetry, Clovek zahrada sirá ("Man: A Broad Garden")
in 1953. This and two other collections, Poslední máj (1955;
"The Last
May") and Monology (1957; "Monologues"), because of their ironic
tone and eroticism, were condemned by the Czech political authorities.
Meanwhile, he was in and out of the Communist Party (1948-50, 1956-70) and studied and taught in the Film Faculty of Prague's Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts.
Several volumes of short stories and a highly successful one-act play, Majitelé Klícu (1962; "The Owners of the Keys"), were followed by his first novel and one of his greatest works, Zert (1967; The Joke), a comic, ironic view of the private lives and destinies of various Czechs during the years of Stalinism; translated into several languages, it achieved great international acclaim. His second novel, Zivot je jinde (1969; Life Is Elsewhere), about a hapless, romantic-minded hero who thoroughly embraces the Communist takeover of 1948, was forbidden Czech publication. Kundera had participated in the brief but heady liberalization of Czechoslovakia in 1967-68, and after the Soviet occupation of the country he refused to admit his political errors and consequently wasattacked by the authorities, who banned all his works, fired him from his teaching positions, and ousted him from the Communist Party.
In 1975 Kundera was allowed to emigrate (with his wife, Vera Hrabankova)
from his Czechoslovakian homeland to teach at the University of Rennes
(1975-78) in France; in 1979 the Czech government stripped him of his citizenship.
His subsequent novels, such as Valcík na rozloucenou (1976;
"Farewell Waltz"; Eng. trans. The Farewell Party), Kniha smíchu
a zapomnení (1979; The Book of Laughter and Forgetting), and Nes
nesitelná lehkost byti (1984; The Unbearable Lightness of
Being), were published in France and elsewhere abroad but until 1989 were
banned in his homeland. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, one of his
most successful works, is a series of wittily ironic meditations on the
modern state's tendency to deny and obliterate human memory and historical
truth. A translation of Kundera's reflections on the art of the novel was
published in 1988.
"Kundera, Milan" Britannica Online.
<http://www.eb.com:180/cgi-bin/g?DocF=micro/331/7.html>
[Accessed 01 May 1998].
page last updated May 1. 2000