Milan Kundera Summary

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... Read more

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 ... Read more

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 surve... Read more

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" (... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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 fictions&#x... Read more

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... Read more

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 ... Read more

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... Read more

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,... Read more