Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera, (1929- ). Czech novelist and writer, From the late 1950s Kundera taught literature at the Prague Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, while also publishing poetry and drama. The short stories in Laughable Loves (1963; 1965) and his first novel, The Joke (1967), were remarkable at the time for their irreverent style and sexual frankness. Following the crushing. of Czech liberalism by the Sovietled invasion of 1968, Kundera’s books were banned and he lost his teaching posts. He emigrated to France in 1975, becoming a French citizen six years later. His other novels,, most of which are mordant sex comedies that explore the private conduct of the Czechs under totalitarianism, include Life is Elsewhere (1975), The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), and Immortality (1991). These books have enjoyed a wide readership in the West.
