Kundera normally writes in
Czech, although interestingly he has lately been writing in
French instead of his native language. Those who are familiar with his works may have noticed the change in
timbre of his always spellbinding
prose.
Earlier works share a
common thread of
individual vs.
the state; once the
iron curtain was lifted, more
esoteric themes, which were always present in the earlier works, rose to the surface. Having felt the heavy hand of
censorship himself (he lived in
exile for a number of years), he often writes about censorship in many forms - censorship of
art, censorship of
emotions, censorship of the normal, sometimes unpleasant goings-on of everyday life. As he states in
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, "
kitsch is the denial of shit."
His
essays concerning the nature of writing (which, for him, is solidly bound to
art,
music, and
history) are beautifully written and often challenge one's preconceptions.
Read all of these:
- The Joke (Czech, 1965)
- Laughable Loves (short stories in Czech, 1969)
- Life is Elsewhere (Czech, 1969)
- Farewell Waltz (Czech, 1970)
- The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Czech, 1978)
- Jacques and His Master: An Homage to Diderot in Three Acts (a play in Czech, 1971)
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Czech, 1982)
- The Art of the Novel (essay in seven parts written in French, 1985)
- Immortality (Czech, 1988) ***personal favourite***
- Testaments Betrayed (essay in nine parts, written in French, 1992)
- Slowness (French, 1994)
- Identity (French, 1996)