By Jyothi Swaroop Makena
17th July, 2023
Milan Kundera, (born April 1, 1929, Brno, Czechoslovakia [now in Czech Republic]—died July 11, 2023, Paris, France), is a Czech novelist, short-story writer, playwright, essayist, and poet whose works combine erotic comedy with political criticism and philosophical speculation.
Young Kundera studied music but gradually turned to writing, and he began teaching literature at the Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in Prague in 1952.
He published several collections of poetry in the 1950s, including Poslední máj (1955; “The Last May”), an homage to the Communist resistance leader Julius Fučík, and Monology (1957; “Monologues”), a volume of love poems. Kundera's best-known work is The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
During his early career he moved in and out of the Communist Party: he joined in 1948, was expelled in 1950, and was readmitted in 1956, remaining a member until 1970.
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 was attacked by the authorities, who banned all his works, fired him from his teaching positions, and ousted him from the Communist Party.
Kundera was awarded the 1985 Jerusalem Prize, in 1987 the Austrian State Prize for European Literature, and the 2000 Herder Prize. In 2021, he received the Golden Order of Merit from the president of Slovenia, Borut Pahor. Kundera died after a prolonged illness, in Paris on 11 July 2023, at the age of 94.