Czech-born author Milan Kundera died Tuesday in Paris, France after a prolonged illness. He was 94.
Though he was a big supporter of the Communist Party early on, his first novel, The Joke, published in ’67, satirically criticized totalitarianism within the party. Despite the book’s government detractors, it was widely acclaimed.
Kundera’s books often dealt with things like totalitarianism and the misuse of authority, as well as death and sex. One of his most popular novels, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, was published to immediate success in 1984, translated into dozens of languages, and even adapted into a film starring Daniel Day Lewis in 1988. The conversationally philosophical novel follows a Czech doctor — and his string of lovers — who is critical of the Communist Party.
There was a lightness and humor in Kundera’s approach to the stories he told, but his writing was not without its criticism. Some described his portrayal of women as being especially objectifying, for example.
Born in 1929 in Brno, Czechoslovakia, Kundera is survived by his wife, Vera Hrabankova.
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