The Unbearable Lightness of Being author Kundera dies, aged 94

Czech novelist Milan Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Faber & Faber), has died, aged 94, in his Paris home, the Moravian State Library confirmed.  

The author was born in 1929 in the Czech city of Brno and was an active member of the Communist Party when he was young. He was first expelled from the party in 1950 because of “anti-community activities” and again in 1970, two years after the Prague Spring. In 1979, he had his Czech citizenship revoked and this was only restored in 2019. He became a French citizen in 1981.  

From 1975, Kundera had lived in Paris, where he wrote his widely translated novels, poems, essays and plays, including one of his most famous works, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The book, which was been reprinted in over two dozen languages, has endured as one of the great works of literature of the 20th century, and cemented Kundera as a leading literary figure.

Set in 1968 Prague, it tells the story of two couples and explores politics, desire and freedom. It was adapted for the screen in 1988 by Philip Kaufman, in a film starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Juliette Binoche that Kundera himself has criticised. 

The Joke (Faber & Faber), an acclaimed novel satirising totalitarianism, was Kundera’s first book, published in 1967. The last novel he wrote in his native Czech language was Immortality (Faber & Faber), published in 1988, after which he began writing in French, starting with Slowness (Faber & Faber) and ending with what became his last novel in 2014, The Festival of Insignificance (Faber & Faber).  

Faber & Faber, Kundera’s UK publisher, said in a Twitter post: “We are deeply sad to hear the news of our beloved author Milan Kundera’s death. A colossus of world literature, he has held a unique place on our list for over four decades. Our thoughts are with his wife Vera."

The Guardian wrote Kundera “found new possibilities in past literature” and was “always pointing out still unexplored paths for the novel: of play, of dream, of thought, of time. There was no end to the art of the novel, it was inexhaustible. His own writing, too, vibrates with energy," while the Times remembers him as "one of the best-known cultural figures his country produced in the second half of the 20th century," saying he "enjoyed something approaching a cult status" for work that "centred almost playfully on the complexities of human relationships and erotic behaviour". In reporting his death, Le Monde called him a "tireless defender of the novel".