by Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera, a novelist, born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, has settled in France since 1975. Long novels, Jokes, Living elsewhere, Goodbye Balls, Smile Memorandums, The Light of Unbearable Life and Immortality, as well as short novels, Laughable Love, are written in the author¡¯s native Czech language. The latest long novels, Slow, Identity and Ignorance, and the accompanying novels, The Art of Novels and The Testament of Being Betrayed, are written in French.

On April 1, 1929, Milan Kundera was born in Brno, the second largest city in Czechoslovakia. My father is a pianist, a music professor, and the president of the conservatory of music.

Kundera spent much of his childhood in his father¡¯s library, where he frequently listened silently to his father¡¯s lectures to his students; where his father taught him piano and guided him into the music world; where he browsed his father¡¯s numerous books. At the age of ten, he read a large number of literary books, both Czech and foreign. At the age of thirteen and fourteen, during the Second World War, he learned composition from one of the greatest Czech composers, Paul Hass. Later, Mr. Hass was imprisoned in a concentration camp and never left. Kundera always regarded him as ¡°one of my personal temples.¡±

In 1947, Milan Kundera, aged 18, joined the Communist Party of the Czech Republic. He was initially passionate about styling and wanted to be a sculptor and painter. He once became a well-known painter in his hometown and had painted many illustrations for theaters and publishers. Later, he fell in love with music. While passionate about music, Kundera also became passionate about writing poetry.

In 1948, at the age of 19, Milan Kundera often went to music classes after he was admitted to the philosophy department of Charles University in Prague. Later, he went to Prague Film Academy to study film, where he graduated. While infatuated with music, Kundera also devoted himself to writing poetry. From Kundera's first poem, Man: A Vast Garden, people hear different voices. At that time, dogmatism prevailed in the Czech literary world, and formulaic poetry flooded everywhere. However, Kundera's poems have obvious surrealism and critical spirit.

In 1956, he completed his studies at the Prague Film Academy and left school as a teacher, teaching world literature. Soon after leaving school, Kundera began to read a lot of theoretical books and continued to complete the "Art of the Novels" book, which had begun to be written during the university, from his 25th to his 27th, completed for almost two years. The direct motivation to write this book was to acquire teacher qualifications and also the need for teaching as well as to solve some of the confusion in literary practice. The "Art of the Novels" was published in 1960 and won the Czechoslovak National Prize in 1964.

The year 1958 was a substantial year for Kundera. He spent a day or two between the writing of the script to write I, the sad God, the first novel he wrote in his life. After writing the first, he wrote the second, third, fourth ... a total of 10 books. From the first to the last one, the time spans a whole 10 years. These short novels were published under the general title of "Laughable Love" and the work that really began to bring him worldwide reputation was the novel "Joke", which came out in three editions, printed in hundreds of thousands of copies. The joke was also filmed.

In August 1968, the Soviet army occupied Czechoslovakia. The joke was listed as a banned book and disappeared immediately from bookstores and libraries. In Eastern European countries, with the exception of Poland and Yugoslavia, it suffered the same fate. Kundera party membership was dismissed, the faculty at the Film Academy was also dismissed, and all works were suddenly disappeared from bookstores and public libraries, while it was also forbidden to publish any work.

In 1975, at the personal request of the President of the French Parliament, Edgar Vooré, the Czech government directed Milan Kundera and his wife to France. After Kundera arrived in France, on the recommendation of the French writer Ferdinand, he first served as an assistant at the University of Rhein. At the beginning of the exile, Kundera became a moral public figure. He was on television, interviewed, spoke, wrote articles, and used various occasions to tell people about the situation of the Soviet invasion of post-Czechoslovakia.

In 1978, Milan Kundera and his wife settled in Paris and took French citizenship in 1981. In 1984, Kundera published The Unbearable in Life. In 1988, American director Philip Kaufman adapted it into the film The Love of Prague.

1985. Li Oufan, a literary critic, published Two Witnesses of World Literature: The Inspiration of South American and Eastern European Literature to Chinese Modern Literature in Foreign Literature Studies, introducing South American writer Marquez and Czech writer Milan Kundera and their respective masterpieces. Kundera was officially introduced into China.

In 1989, Atlantis Publishing House in Brno, Kundera's hometown, took the initiative to contact him and expressed its willingness to publish his works that had been banned in his motherland for more than 20 years. Kundera readily agreed, but clearly stipulated that only those "mature works" he had selected and reviewed could be published.

In the autumn of 1995, the Czech government decided to award Milan Kundera one of the highest national awards, the Honour Award. He gladly accepted and answered the questions of the Czech People¡¯s Daily reporter in written form. Speaking of the feeling of winning the award, Kundera said: ¡°I am very moved, and I can say, that I am especially moved by the letter to Václav Havel.