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Milan Kundera

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Milan Kundera


Born
in Brno, Czechia, Czech Republic
April 01, 1929

Died
July 11, 2023

Genre
Literature & Fiction

Influences
Robert Musil, Witold Gombrowicz, Sterne, Diderot, François Rabelais, H ...more


Milan Kundera (1 April 1929 – 11 July 2023) was a Czech and French novelist. He went into exile in France in 1975, acquiring citizenship in 1981. His Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked in 1979, but he was granted Czech citizenship in 2019.

Kundera wrote in Czech and French. He revises the French translations of all his books; people therefore consider these original works as not translations. He is best known for his novels, including The Joke (1967), The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1979), and The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), all of which exhibit his extreme though often comical skepticism.
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Combine Editions

Average rating: 4.01 · 916,228 ratings · 62,643 reviews · 161 distinct works • Similar authors
The Unbearable Lightness of...
4.10 avg rating — 558,474 ratings — published 1984 — 39 editions
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The Book of Laughter and Fo...
3.94 avg rating — 55,176 ratings — published 1979 — 218 editions
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Immortality
4.14 avg rating — 43,931 ratings — published 1990 — 242 editions
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The Joke
4.03 avg rating — 41,521 ratings — published 1967 — 265 editions
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Laughable Loves
3.80 avg rating — 40,068 ratings — published 1979 — 27 editions
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Identity
3.69 avg rating — 34,214 ratings — published 1997 — 9 editions
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Ignorance
3.81 avg rating — 28,543 ratings — published 2000
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Life is Elsewhere
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3.96 avg rating — 22,112 ratings — published 1973 — 149 editions
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Slowness
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3.60 avg rating — 23,192 ratings — published 1995 — 180 editions
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Farewell Waltz
3.87 avg rating — 20,594 ratings — published 1972 — 5 editions
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More books by Milan Kundera…
Quotes by Milan Kundera  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's beautiful.”
― Milan Kundera
7647 likes
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“You can't measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange.”
― Milan Kundera
3888 likes
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“Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
tags: goals, success
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Polls

April 2016 Revisit the Shelf-Reread Poll

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, 288 pages, 1963
 
  30 votes, 16.7%

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, 324 pages, 1960
 
  24 votes, 13.3%

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, 539 pages, 1980
 
  19 votes, 10.6%

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, 273 pages, 1818
 
  14 votes, 7.8%

 
  13 votes, 7.2%

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, 251 pages, 1817
 
  13 votes, 7.2%

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, 592 pages, 1957
 
  12 votes, 6.7%

 
  11 votes, 6.1%

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, 311 pages, 1985
 
  10 votes, 5.6%

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, 227 pages, 1953
 
  7 votes, 3.9%

 
  6 votes, 3.3%

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, 320 pages, 1719
 
  6 votes, 3.3%

 
  5 votes, 2.8%

 
  4 votes, 2.2%

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, 306 pages, 1726
 
  3 votes, 1.7%

 
  3 votes, 1.7%

180 total votes
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