Milan Kundera

Franco-Czechoslovak poet and novelist (1929—2023)

AI overview

Milan Kundera was a poet and novelist born in Czechoslovakia in 1929 who later lived in France, and he became one of the most influential writers of the late 20th century. His novels, which explored themes of human existence, love, and the absurdity of life, gained international recognition and made him an important figure in modern literature.

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Person · Open Library

Born: 1929-04-01
Died: 2023-07-11
Works: 195

Top works

al-Ḥayāh hīya fī makān ākhar
Burut
ha-Hanaʾah sheba-iṭiyut
Člověk zahrada širá
Zahradou těch, které mám rád

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Film & TV

Writing · Brno, Czechoslovakia

Milan Kundera (1 April 1929 – 11 July 2023) was a writer of Czech origin who lived in exile in France since 1975, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1981. He is best known as the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and The Joke. Kundera has written in both Czech and French. He revises the French translations of all his books; these therefore are…

Known for

Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Weight of History — Self (archive footage)2023
Milan Kundera: From the Joke to Insignificance — Self - Writer (voice) (archive footage)2021
Apostrophes — Self1975

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Music · MusicBrainz

Type: Person
Gender: Male
Origin: France
Active from: 1929
Active to: 2023

Discogs

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Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners: 557
Total plays: 8,704

Similar artists

Hermann HesseEmil HaklUmberto EcoKarel ČapekF.M.Dostojevskij

Milan Kundera (Czech pronunciation: [ˈmɪlan ˈkundɛra]; born 1 April 1929) is the Czech Republic's most recognized living writer. Of Czech origin, he has lived in exile in France since 1975, having become a naturalised citizen in 1981. Kundera's best-known work is The Unbearable Lightness of Being. His books were banned by the Communist regimes of Czechoslovakia until the downfall of the regime in the Velvet Revolution of 1989. He lives virtually incognito and rarely speaks to the media. <a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Milan+Kundera">Read more on Last.fm</a>

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Recent publications · Crossref

5 total works indexed

STRING v11: protein–protein association networks with increased coverage, supporting functional discovery in genome-wide experimental datasets
· 2018 · cited 15,401x
Free radicals and antioxidants in normal physiological functions and human disease
· 2007 · cited 10,911x
STRING v10: protein–protein interaction networks, integrated over the tree of life
· 2014 · cited 8,889x
3D Slicer as an image computing platform for the Quantitative Imaging Network
· 2012 · cited 7,943x
2017 ESC Guidelines for the management of acute myocardial infarction in patients presenting with ST-segment elevation
· 2017 · cited 7,810x

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Quotes

“Do you realize that people don't know how to read Kafka simply because they want to decipher him? Instead of letting themselves be carried away by his unequaled imagination, they look for allegories — and come up with nothing but clichés: life is absurd (or it is not absurd), God is beyond reach (or within reach), etc. You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself.”
“A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality.”
“The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and thus the novelists' discoveries, however old they may be, will never cease to astonish.”
“Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality. The morality that stands against the ineradicable human habit of judging instantly, ceaselessly, and everyone; of judging before, and in the absence of, understanding. From the viewpoint of the novel’s wisdom, that fervid readiness to judge is the most detestable stupidity, the most pernicious evil.”
“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring — it was peace.”
“Mysticism and exaggeration go together. A mystic must not fear ridicule if he is to push all the way to the limits of humility or the limits of delight.”

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Wikidata facts

Place of birth: Brno
Image: Milan Kundera redux.jpg

Show 11 more facts

Commons category: Milan Kundera
date of birth: 1929-04-01
name in native language: Milan Kundera
IPA transcription: ˈmɪlan ˈkundɛra
start of work period: 1953-00-00
date of death: 2023-07-11
end of work period: 2023-00-00
date of burial or cremation: 2023-07-19
P8168: Natalia Rusakova
P12674: Georges Weill
place of burial: Brno

Sources (15)

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~23 min read

Article

Milan Kundera ( UK: /ˈkʊndərə, ˈkʌn-/ KU(U)N-dər-ə; Czech: [ˈmɪlan ˈkundɛra] ; 1 April 1929 – 11 July 2023) was a Czech and French novelist. Kundera went into exile in France in 1975, acquiring citizenship in 1981. His Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked in 1979, but he was granted Czech citizenship in 2019.

Kundera's best-known work is The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Before the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the country's ruling Communist Party of Czechoslovakia banned his books. He led a low-profile life and rarely spoke to the media. He was thought to be a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature and was also a nominee for other awards.