Milan Kundera, the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, whose dark, provocative novels delved into the enigma of the human condition, has died aged 94.
"Unfortunately I can confirm that Mr Milan Kundera passed away yesterday [Tuesday] after a prolonged illness," said a spokeswoman for the Milan Kundera Library in his native city of Brno.
Through his characteristic satire and poetic prose, Kundera had sought to express all that is compelling and absurd about life, drawing on his own experiences of being stripped of his Czech nationality for dissent.
Life, he said in his work of criticism Art of the Novel (1986), "is a trap we've always known: we are born without having asked to be, locked in a body we never chose, and destined to die."
Young rebel
Kundera was born on April 1, 1929, in the town of Brno, in what was then Czechoslovakia. His father was a famous pianist.
He studied in Prague, where he joined the Communist Party, translated the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire and wrote poetry of his own.
He also taught at a film school where his students included the future Oscar-winning director Milos Forman.
Although he professed faithfulness to communism, the independent spirit of Kundera's writing soon got him into trouble.
He was expelled from the party in 1950, rejoined in 1956 and was expelled a second time in 1970 after the Prague Spring reform movement – in which he was seen as playing a role – was crushed.
Locked out
Kundera's first novel The Joke, a work of dark humour about the one-party state published in 1967, led to a ban on his writing in Czechoslovakia while also making him famous in his homeland.
In 1975, he and his wife Vera went into exile in France, where he worked for four years as an assistant professor at the University of Rennes. They were stripped of their Czech nationality in 1979.
In his adopted home, where he became a citizen in 1981, his reputation and success grew as translations of his novels appeared, such as Life is Elsewhere (1973) set in Czechoslovakia about a poet entrapped by the communist regime.
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1979) playfully explored through seven interlinked narratives the nature of forgetting in politics, history and daily life.
The novel was "brilliant and original", said The New York Times in 1980, "written with a purity and wit that invite us directly in; it is also strange, with a strangeness that locks us out".
Kundera was an author "prone to sudden, if graceful, skips into autobiography, abstract rumination and recent Czech history", wrote the paper's John Updike.
By far his most famous work, The Unbearable Lightness of Being was published in 1984 and turned into a film starring Juliette Binoche and Daniel Day-Lewis in 1987.
The novel is a morality tale about freedom and passion, on both an individual and collective level, set against the Prague Spring and its aftermath in exile.
No going back?
Kundera's critics say he turned his back on fellow Czechs and dissidents following his exile in France.
In 2008, a Czech magazine accused him of being a police informer under communist rule, which he denied as "pure lies".
In 2013, Kundera published his first novel after a 13-year hiatus.
The Festival of Insignificance, about five friends in Paris, received mixed reviews, with The Atlantic noting its "near-impenetrable irony" and The Guardian deeming it a "stinker".
What Kundera "has to tell us seems to have less relevance", said The New York Times. "You can't help wondering what his evolution would have been like if he had stayed, or stayed longer, in Czechoslovakia," the reviewer added.
In 2019, the Czech Republic restored his nationality and the Milan Kundera Library opened in Brno this year.
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More from Neighbourhood Watch
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Three tips from La Perle's performers
1 The kind of water athletes drink is important. Gwilym Hooson, a 28-year-old British performer who is currently recovering from knee surgery, found that out when the company was still in Studio City, training for 12 hours a day. “The physio team was like: ‘Why is everyone getting cramps?’ And then they realised we had to add salt and sugar to the water,” he says.
2 A little chocolate is a good thing. “It’s emergency energy,” says Craig Paul Smith, La Perle’s head coach and former Cirque du Soleil performer, gesturing to an almost-empty open box of mini chocolate bars on his desk backstage.
3 Take chances, says Young, who has worked all over the world, including most recently at Dragone’s show in China. “Every time we go out of our comfort zone, we learn a lot about ourselves,” she says.
Picture of Joumblatt and Hariri breaking bread sets Twitter alight
Mr Joumblatt’s pessimism regarding the Lebanese political situation didn’t stop him from enjoying a cheerful dinner on Tuesday with several politicians including Mr Hariri.
Caretaker Culture Minister Ghattas Khoury tweeted a picture of the group sitting around a table at a discrete fish restaurant in Beirut’s upscale Sodeco area.
Mr Joumblatt told The National that the fish served at Kelly’s Fish lounge had been very good.
“They really enjoyed their time”, remembers the restaurant owner. “Mr Hariri was taking selfies with everybody”.
Mr Hariri and Mr Joumblatt often have dinner together to discuss recent political developments.
Mr Joumblatt was a close ally of Mr Hariri’s assassinated father, former prime minister Rafik Hariri. The pair were leading figures in the political grouping against the 15-year Syrian occupation of Lebanon that ended after mass protests in 2005 in the wake of Rafik Hariri’s murder. After the younger Hariri took over his father’s mantle in 2004, the relationship with Mr Joumblatt endured.
However, the pair have not always been so close. In the run-up to the election last year, Messrs Hariri and Joumblatt went months without speaking over an argument regarding the new proportional electoral law to be used for the first time. Mr Joumblatt worried that a proportional system, which Mr Hariri backed, would see the influence of his small sect diminished.
With so much of Lebanese politics agreed in late-night meetings behind closed doors, the media and pundits put significant weight on how regularly, where and with who senior politicians meet.
In the picture, alongside Messrs Khoury and Hariri were Mr Joumbatt and his wife Nora, PSP politician Wael Abou Faour and Egyptian ambassador to Lebanon Nazih el Nagari.
The picture of the dinner led to a flurry of excitement on Twitter that it signified an imminent government formation. “God willing, white smoke will rise soon and Walid Beik [a nickname for Walid Joumblatt] will accept to give up the minister of industry”, one user replied to the tweet. “Blessings to you…We would like you to form a cabinet”, wrote another.
The next few days will be crucial in determining whether these wishes come true.
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The flights
Emirates flies from Dubai to Phnom Penh via Yangon from Dh2,700 return including taxes. Cambodia Bayon Airlines and Cambodia Angkor Air offer return flights from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap from Dh250 return including taxes. The flight takes about 45 minutes.
The hotels
Rooms at the Raffles Le Royal in Phnom Penh cost from $225 (Dh826) per night including taxes. Rooms at the Grand Hotel d'Angkor cost from $261 (Dh960) per night including taxes.
The tours
A cyclo architecture tour of Phnom Penh costs from $20 (Dh75) per person for about three hours, with Khmer Architecture Tours. Tailor-made tours of all of Cambodia, or sites like Angkor alone, can be arranged by About Asia Travel. Emirates Holidays also offers packages.
