Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera (Czech pronunciation: [ˈmɪlan ˈkundɛra]); born 1 April 1929) is the Czech Republic's most recognised living writer. Of Czech origin, he has lived in exile in France since 1975, having become a naturalised citizen in 1981. Having written in both Czech and French, he revises the French translations of all his books; these therefore are not considered translations but original works.

Kundera is best known as the author of works such as The Joke, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. His books were banned by the Communist regimes of Czechoslovakia until the downfall of the regime in the Velvet Revolution of 1989. He lives virtually incognito and rarely speaks to the media. A perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he has been nominated on several occasions.