Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera was a writer, screenwriter, translator, and novelist born on April 1, 1929, in Brno, Královo Pole. He held citizenship in France, the Czech Republic, and Czechoslovakia, and was stateless at various times. Kundera spoke and wrote in French and Czech, with Czech as his native language. He was educated at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, and the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. His professional career began in 1953, and he was employed by the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences.

His notable works include The Joke, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Immortality. Kundera received the Herder Prize, Prix mondial Cino Del Duca, Knight of the Legion of Honour, and Vilenica Prize. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. He identified as an atheist and resided in Paris and Rennes.