Kundera, Milan (1929– )

Czech-born French writer. Known for his political and erotic satires, he achieved widespread acclaim with his first novel, Zert/The Joke (1967), a satire on Stalinism in Czechoslovakia. Other successful novels include Kniha smí chu a zapomnení/The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1979) and Nes nesitelná lehkost byti/The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984; filmed 1988).

After all of his works were banned in Czechoslovakia, Kundera moved to France in 1975, obtaining French citizenship in 1981. He has also written poetry, plays, short stories, and essays; the latter include The Art of the Novel (1988), Testaments Betrayed (1990), and The Curtain (2005), collections examining the history of the European novel.