In Milan Kundera’s Work, the Erotic Meets the Subversive
His best novels, charged with a distrust of authority, retain their sweep and power.
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By Dwight Garner
July 12, 2023
It’s hard to overstate how central Milan Kundera was, in the mid-1980s, to literary culture in America and elsewhere. He was the best-known Czech writer since Kafka, and his fiction brought news of sophisticated Eastern European societies trembling under the threat of Soviet repression.
Reviews of his erotic, heavy-hearted and metaphysical novels commanded the front pages of books sections, as did his occasional interviews. His work cast a spell, and few did not submit. In every college town, people were buying, reading and crushing on Kundera. His status has fallen somewhat. In retrospect, the moment feels slightly like a mass delusion, if an agreeable and largely worthwhile one. READ MORE