Background

KUNDERA, Milan was born on April 1, 1929 in Brno. Son of Doctor Ludvik Kundera and Milada KunderovaJanosikova.

Education

Film Faculty, Academy, of Music and Dramatic Arts, Prague.

Career

Writer (also French nationality). Assistant Professor, Film Faculty, Academy, of Music and Dramatic Arts, Prague 1958-1969. Professor, University of Rennes 80. Professor Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales, Paris 19S0-.

Achievements

• Milan Kundera has been listed as a notable writer, educator by Marquis Who's Who.

Works

• essay

  • About the Disputes of Inheritance, 1955 (an essay on the problem of creative trends in the Czech literature)

  • The Art of the Novel, 1960 (essay on Vladislav Vanèura)

  • The Czech Deal, 1968 (essay on the problem of the position of the Czech culture in the actual politic situation)

  • Radicalism and Exhibitionism, 1969 (essay as answer to Vaclav Havels polemic reaction to “The Czech Deal”

  • The Stolen West or the Tragedy of Central Europe, 1983

  • The Art of the Novel, essay in 7 parts, 1985 (essay about literature and the tradition of the novel in European culture)

  • Testaments Betrayed, essay in 9 parts, 1992

• fiction

  • The Joke, 1965

  • Laughable Loves, 3 parts: 1963-1965-1968, complete 1969

  • Life is Elsewhere, 1969/70

  • The Farewell Waltz (earlier translation: Party), 1970/71

  • The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, 1978

  • The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 1982 Immortality, 1988

  • Slowness, 1994

  • Identity, 1996

  • Ignorance, 2000

• play

  • The Owner of the Keys, 1962

  • Two Ears,Two Weddings (Slowness), 1968

  • The Blunder, 1969

  • Jaques and His Master, 1971 (Hommage to Diderot in 3 acts)

• poem

  • Man: A Broad Garden, 1953

  • The Last May, 1954-1955-1961

  • Monologues, 1957-1964-1965

Membership

Union of Czechoslovak Writers 1963-1969. Editorial Board Literami noviny 1963-1967, 1968. Editorial Board Listy 1968-1969.

• Communist Party of Czechoslovakia , Czechoslovakia

  1948 - 1950

• Communist Party of Czechoslovakia , Czechoslovakia

  1956 - 1970

Interests

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Goethe, Witold Gombrowicz, Friedrich Nietzsche

• Writers

  Giovanni Boccaccio, Rabelais, Cervantes, Laurence Sterne, Fielding, Denis Diderot, Robert Musil, Goethe, Witold Gombrowicz, Hermann Broch, Friedrich Nietzsche, Franz Kafka, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach, Emil Cioran

• Music & Bands

  Czech folk music

Connections

Married Vera Hrabankova in 1967.

Father:

Ludvík Kundera

musicologist, pianist

Mother:

Milada Janosikova

Cousin:

Ludvík Kundera

translator, writer

Wife:

Vera Hrabankova