Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera’s Followers (19,109)

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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 His Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked in 1979, but he was granted Czech citizenship in 2019.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 · 895,432 ratings · 60,067 reviews · 149 distinct works • Similar authors
The Unbearable Lightness of...
4.11 avg rating — 545,015 ratings — published 1984 — 9 editions
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The Book of Laughter and Fo...
3.95 avg rating — 54,384 ratings — published 1979 — 216 editions
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Immortality
4.14 avg rating — 43,167 ratings — published 1990 — 6 editions
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The Joke
4.03 avg rating — 40,679 ratings — published 1967 — 30 editions
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Laughable Loves
3.81 avg rating — 39,177 ratings — published 1963 — 220 editions
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Identity
3.69 avg rating — 33,367 ratings — published 1997 — 184 editions
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Ignorance
3.81 avg rating — 27,977 ratings — published 2000 — 176 editions
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Life is Elsewhere
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3.96 avg rating — 21,722 ratings — published 1973
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Slowness
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3.60 avg rating — 22,711 ratings — published 1995 — 180 editions
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Farewell Waltz
3.87 avg rating — 20,114 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
7641 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
3891 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 2018 Revisit the Shelf Reread Poll

Persuasion by Jane Austen, 1817, 249 pages, Last Read Aug. 2015
 
  56 votes, 15.0%

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, 1855, 521 pages, Last Read June 2015
 
  45 votes, 12.1%

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, 1961, 453 pages, Last Read Nov. 2013
 
  42 votes, 11.3%

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, 1960, 324 pages, Last Read 2016
 
  38 votes, 10.2%

Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, 1818, 273 pages, Last Read Oct. 2016
 
  37 votes, 9.9%

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, 1943, 496 pages, Last Read May 2013
 
  24 votes, 6.4%

The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1922, 422 pages, Last Read Jan. 2014
 
  24 votes, 6.4%

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, 1984, 320 pages, Last Read Dec. 2012
 
  22 votes, 5.9%

Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë, 1847, 251 pages, Last Read Mar 2016
 
  22 votes, 5.9%

King Lear by William Shakespeare, 1603, 316 pages, Last Read Oct. 2012
 
  21 votes, 5.6%

The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy, 1878, 448 pages, Last Read Oct. 2015
 
  15 votes, 4.0%

The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek, 1921, 752 pages, Last Read July 2012
 
  14 votes, 3.8%

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, 1847, 867 pages, Last Read Sep. 2011
 
  13 votes, 3.5%

373 total votes
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