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Milan Kundera.
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Biography EssayMilan Kundera is one of the few Czech writers who have achieved wide international recognition. In his native Czechoslovakia, Kundera has been regarded as an important author and intell...
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In his novels, the Czech-born author Milan Kundera (born 1929) sought to discover the answer to the question: What is the nature of existence"Milan Kundera was one of the most important and talented n...
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Milan Kundera was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia in 1929. "I was born on the first of April. That has its metaphysical significance." fn:1 Antonin J. Liehm, The Politics of Culture, translated by peter ...
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Milan Kundera is one of the few Czech writers who have achieved wide international recognition. In his native Czechoslovakia, Kundera has been regarded as an important author and intellectual since ...
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Critical Essay by Elizabeth Pochoda
Refined in the laboratory of social oppression,… Kundera's knowledge of personal freedom leads inexorably to the comic perception of victims of survei...
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Critical Essay by Pearl K. Bell
Novels of protest—protest against oppression and injustice—have invariably taken the form of brutal realism, from a Zola to a Solzhenitsyn, since they see...
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Critical Essay by Janet Malcolm
Kitsch is the enemy of every artist, of course, but it has special menace for the artist who has made his way out of the abyss of "totalitarian kitsch" (a...
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Below, O'Brien analyzes "play," intrusive authorship, and the significance of history in Kundera's fiction, particularly in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Unbeara...
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In the following essay, Adams highlights the way Kundera's folk heritage informs his concept of identity in both his theoretical writings and his fiction, suggesting reasons for his internation...
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In the following review of Testaments Betrayed, von Kunes focuses on Kundera's views on the arts of Kafka and Janácek.
Milan Kundera continues his discussion on the art of the novel in h...
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In the review below, Hutchinson addresses the main themes of Testaments Betrayed.
In 1979, while interviewing Milan Kundera for Corriere della Serra, the essayist Alain Finkielkraut remarked on how Mr...
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In the following essay, Eagleton considers the various ideological conflicts that inform Kundera's fiction.
Milan Kundera tells the story in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting of a Czech being...
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In the following review of The Art of the Novel, Meisel focuses on Kundera's treatment of formal devices of the novel genre.
Milan Kundera has charmed the world with his sonorous fictionsȁ...
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Below, Gaughan discusses the purpose of laughter and comedy in "Nobody Will Laugh," especially as they relate to the individual and society.
Comedy and laughter are often important thema...
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A prominent and controversial figure in contemporary American letters, Roth draws heavily upon his Jewish upbringing and his life as an author to explore his predominant thematic concerns—the s...
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In the following essay, O'Brien singles out the stories "Hitchhiking Game" and "Edward and God" as illustrations of Kundera's "ability to expose the mi...
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An American expatriate living in England, Theroux vividly captures in his fiction and travel books the experiences of displaced individuals and the cultures of exotic lands. An important motif in his ...
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Broyard was an influential American literary critic who, during his career, contributed book reviews to the New York Times, served as editor of the New York Times Book Review, and lectured on sociolog...
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The author of Milan Kundera: A Voice from Central Europe (1981), Porter is an English educator specializing in Russian literature. In the following excerpt, Porter discerns an overarching pattern in t...
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An English poet, novelist, and critic, Enright is sometimes associated with a group of authors—Kingsley Amis, John Wain, Philip Larkin, Robert Conquest, and Elizabeth Jennings—whose conc...
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In the following essay, Sturdivant suggests that Kundera uses sexuality as a means of expressing the futility and desperation of life.
In examining the work of Czechoslavakian author Milan Kundera, cr...
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In the following essay, Sturdivant assesses Kundera's use of sexual intercourse in his fiction to portray "the utter meaninglessness of the human condition."
In examining the work...
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Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera
Critical Essay by Elizabeth Pochoda
