Milan Kundera dies at 94

Writer Milan Kundera has died at the age of 94. According to the Reuters news agency, the Czech public broadcaster Czech Television announced that Kundera, the author of the book “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, passed away.

“Milan Kundera passed away yesterday in Paris after a long illness,” said Anna Mrazova, spokesperson for the Moravian Library (MZK). Gallimard, Kundera’s publisher in France, also confirmed that the author died on Tuesday (July 11).

Milan Kundera was born in 1929 in the city of Brno in the Moravian region of Czechoslovakia, and immigrated to France in 1975. Kundera, who became a French citizen in 1981, was stripped of his citizenship by the Czechoslovak government after the publication of “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting”. Kundera wrote 15 books, received numerous awards, and worked professionally in music and cinema for many years besides his writing career.

“The unbearable lightness of being” creator Milan Kundera is dead. The writer was 94 years old.

The Czech-French author Milan Kundera is dead. He became internationally famous with his novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” – also through the later film adaptation of the love story in 1987. Kundera has now died at the age of 94. Czech television first reported on the death of the literary star.

Accordingly, the 94-year-old died on Tuesday after a long illness, said the spokeswoman for the Milan Kundera library Anna Mrazova. What exactly the writer suffered from is not known.

Milan Kundera was born in Brno in 1929. After the end of the Second World War he earned his money as a laborer and jazz musician. Only later, in 1948, did he complete high school. He then joined the communist party and began studying music and literature at Charles University in Prague.

The Communist Party in what was then CSSR had excluded Kundera from their ranks in 1970, and a short time later he was banned from publishing. In 1975 he received an exit visa and moved to France. In 1981 he took French citizenship.

Kundera’s last novel was published in 2014

He published his first novel in 1963 and put the multi-part story together in 1970 under the name “The Book of Ridiculous Love”, which is still known today. With the work “Farewell Waltz” he caused a sensation in 1976 and was able to celebrate great success. His best-known book “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” was published in 1984. To date, this is his most commercially successful book. The book about a ménage-à-trois against the background of the Prague Spring of 1968 later became a cinema success with the film stars Daniel Day-Lewis and Juliette Binoche.

In 2014 his last novel, “The Festival of Insignificance” was published. This was his first book after a 14-year hiatus. The writer has died nine years later.