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 novelists to emerge from the death throes of the old...

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 his early twenties. Each of his creative works and...

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 Kussi, Grove Press, 1967. "I come from a family of...

Peter Petro, ed. Critical Essays on Milan Kundera. Critical Essays on World Literature. New York: G. K. Hall & Co, 1999. xi, 293 pp. Selected Bibliography. Index. $49.00, cloth. A collection of reviews, interviews, open letters, articles and essays that focus on the...

THE ART OF THE NOVEL, by Milan Kundera; translated from the French by Linda Asher. Grove Press, 165 pp. $16.95. The title of Milan Kundera's first collection of nonfiction has Henry Jamesian overtones. Kundera's attention, however, focuses upon the novel as the vehicle...

Philip Roth says he's done with Nathan Zuckerman. But is Nathan done with Philip Roth? "Goodbye, Nathan Zuckerman," the headline from Time magazine reads. Roth, the story declares, "has exhausted the possibilities of his character," the fictional adventurer of "The Ghost Writer," "The Anatomy Lesson"...

This is turning out to be a great season for actresses. Following Christine Ebersole’s acclaimed performance in Grey Gardens comes the hilarious Julie White in The Little Dog Laughed, now transferred happily from Off Broadway to the Cort Theatre. As Douglas Carter Beane’s super-agent with...

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 Unbearable Lightness of Being, and, in a brief postscript, Immortality.

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 international appeal.

In the following essay, Sturdivant assesses Kundera's use of sexual intercourse in his fiction to portray "the utter meaninglessness of the human condition."