Milan Kundera, the Czech novelist driven into exile in France in the '70's after being declared an enemy of the state, has died in Paris at age 94.
Kundera was eventually granted French citizenship and considered himself a French writer, but both his life and his work are intrinsically tied to his Communist homeland. Here in the West he is perhaps best known for his novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being," which was later made into a movie.
My knowledge of him, however, comes from my collegiate focus on Central Europe. In at least one of my courses he was highlighted as an important voice of the Prague Spring, a short-lived era of relaxed authoritarianism and heightened freedom - all of which was snuffed out by the Soviet invasion of 1968.
My memory is unclear, but I might have read his work "The Joke" at that time.
RIP
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