Milan Kundera

Biography

Milan Kundera (1929-2023) was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, joined the Communist Party as a young man, was expelled twice, and saw his books banned after the 1968 Soviet invasion. He emigrated to France in 1975 and became a French citizen in 1981. He refused all interviews after 1985, insisted on being identified as a 'French novelist' rather than a Czech exile, and personally oversaw the French translations of his work — which he considered definitive, even over the Czech originals. He spent decades revising his novels for the French editions, effectively rewriting his own canon in a second language. He died in Paris at 94, having not returned to live in Czechoslovakia even after 1989.

Milan Kundera at a glance