R.I.P.

Milan Kundera, Writer of ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being,’ Dies at 94

The acclaimed writer’s passing was reported on Czech television.

Milan Kundera, the celebrated author who wrote The Unbearable Lightness of Being, has died, according to reports on Czech television. He was 94. The author was born into the former Czechoslovakia in 1929 but went into exile in France in 1975 after criticizing the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The communist regime of his homeland consequently banned his books until the end of the 1980s, when a non-violent revolution ended the state’s one-party rule. His literary work won numerous prestigious awards, including the Czech Republic’s Franz Kafka prize in 2020—a year after his Czech citizenship was restored following decades of living in exile.