Farewell, Milan Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Goodbye Milan Kundera, author The unbearable lightness of existence

Czech writer Milan Kunderaauthor of world famous novel **The unbearable lightness of existence **He died at the age of 94. This information was confirmed on Wednesday by public Czech television. Reuters stressed that: “Kunder was appreciated for his style in presenting themes and characters balancing between the mundane reality of everyday life and the lofty world of ideas.”

Born in the Czech city of Brno, the writer emigrated to France in 1975. after being ostracized for criticizing the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

An eminent writer, essayist and playwright, Kundera has established himself as one of the most original, unpredictable and prestigious literary figures of the second half of the 20th century. outside The unbearable lightness of existence – a title that, despite its highly intellectual and philosophical nature, has won a large audience since its publication in 1984 – the author is distinguished by other works of fiction, such as The Book of Laughter and Forgetfulness (1979) or Immortality (1988). In the field of non-fiction, it is worth mentioning one of his latest works, Meeting (2009), a collection of 26 texts in which he explores (and celebrates) various figures who have left their mark on contemporary art and literature.

His creative vision was well reflected in interviews with The newspaper “New York Times in 1985, in which the writer argued that “only a literary work that reveals an unknown fragment of human existence has a basis for existence. Being a writer is not about preaching the truth, but discovering the truth». In the same text, her interlocutor, journalist Olga Carlyle, states the following: “Kundera did for his native Czechoslovakia what Gabriel Garcia Marquez made for Latin America in the sixties and Alexander Solzhenitsyn for Russia in the seventies. He drew the attention of the Western reading public to Eastern Europe, and he did so with ideas that have universal acceptance.” Which helps explain the cultural vacuum left by his disappearance.

This article was previously published on Vogue.es

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