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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 His Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked in 1979, but he was granted Czech citizenship in 2019.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 · 901,025 ratings · 60,764 reviews · 150 distinct works • Similar authors
The Unbearable Lightness of...
4.11 avg rating — 548,659 ratings — published 1984 — 29 editions
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The Book of Laughter and Fo...
3.95 avg rating — 54,563 ratings — published 1979 — 24 editions
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Immortality
4.14 avg rating — 43,373 ratings — published 1990 — 7 editions
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The Joke
4.03 avg rating — 40,890 ratings — published 1967 — 10 editions
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Laughable Loves
3.80 avg rating — 39,409 ratings — published 1963 — 27 editions
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Identity
3.69 avg rating — 33,620 ratings — published 1997 — 184 editions
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Ignorance
3.81 avg rating — 28,115 ratings — published 2000 — 14 editions
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Life is Elsewhere
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3.96 avg rating — 21,854 ratings — published 1973 — 149 editions
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Slowness
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3.60 avg rating — 22,814 ratings — published 1995 — 180 editions
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Farewell Waltz
3.87 avg rating — 20,247 ratings — published 1972 — 205 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
7644 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

December 2014 Revisit the Shelf Classic

1843, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, 104 pages
 
  39 votes, 26.7%

 
  19 votes, 13.0%

 
  17 votes, 11.6%

1898, The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, 192 pages
 
  16 votes, 11.0%

1952, East of Eden by John Steinbeck, 601 pages
 
  13 votes, 8.9%

 
  13 votes, 8.9%

1980, The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, 536 pages
 
  9 votes, 6.2%

 
  8 votes, 5.5%

 
  7 votes, 4.8%

1811, Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, 409 pages
 
  5 votes, 3.4%

146 total votes
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