Milan Kundera is among the few novelists to emerge from East-Central Europe since the Second World War to have achieved international recognition and critical acclaim. Lucid and cerebral, writing a prose charged in equal measure with flippant eroticism, dark existential metaphysics, and ironic humour, the Czech-Parisian writer is published in translation in over twenty-two languages. His literary and essayistic output made a decisive contribution to literary and intellectual debate on both sides of the Berlin Wall in the final decades of communist totalitarianism.
A particularly reclusive author-figure, Kundera is famously reluctant to speak about his life. Having experienced in his native country the curse of “total public visibility” and the consequences of the State's intrusion into
6121 words
Citation: Sandru, Cristina. "Milan Kundera". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 April 2006; last revised 21 March 2024. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2569, accessed 22 November 2024.]
