Czech-born French writer Milan Kundera, author of the novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, has died aged 94, according to Czech media and sources close to the writer.
Kundera was born in Czechoslovakia in 1929 and was expelled multiple times from the Communist party for reformist views and “anti-party activities”.
He was peripherally involved in the 1968 Prague Spring, the brief period of reformist activities that were crushed by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
He went into exile in France in 1975, acquiring citizenship in 1981. His Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked in 1979 and he was granted Czech citizenship in 2019.
His first novel, an anti-Communist tale called The Joke, was published in 1967 and was adapted into a 1969 feature by Jaromil Jires. The film played at San Sebastian, New York and Locarno.
Kundera, who rarely gave interviews, was best known for The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which takes place mainly in Prague in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It explores the artistic, intellectual and romantic life of Czech society from the Prague Spring of 1968 to the Soviet invasion and its aftermath through the lives of a doctor, his lover and a waitress.
The 1988 movie adaptation by Philip Kaufman starred Daniel Day Lewis, Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin. The film was nominated for two Oscars and scored Kaufman a BAFTA win for best adapted screenplay.
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