Milan Kundera, the most famous and widely translated Czech author, was not born in Prague as a human being, but as a world-class writer. It was here that he studied and taught, experienced intense love stories, entered the realm of great literature, and lived through both the hope and disillusionment of 1968, when the invasion of Soviet troops crushed Czech aspirations for democracy. Indeed, he transformed Prague itself into one of the literary capitals of the 20th century — a symbol of Central European memory and the threat of forgetting under the weight of totalitarianism. Three of Kundera’s major novels are also set in Prague: The Joke, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Prague is not merely a backdrop to these stories, but a living political, existential and mnemonic space that shapes the fates of the characters. Kundera’s Prague is a city of love, betrayal, freedom and humiliation — a city that both forms and destroys the individual, and bears witness to the devastating absurdity of ideology. Kundera was born into an era when Prague was ruled from communist Moscow. Even in his youth, he spoke out boldly against censorship and in defence of freedom of expression, for instance at the Congress of Czechoslovak Writers in June 1967. His words were met with enthusiastic applause, albeit the country’s communist leadership regarded them as an open act of rebellion. Writer Milan Kundera in a photograph taken on May 6, 1963, in Prague. | Source: ČTK, František Nesvadba The Prague Spring came to an end on 21 August 1968, when Soviet tanks rumbled through the streets of Prague; the marks of their bullets can still be seen today on the façade of the National Museum. The Kunderas were in Prague at the time, awakened in the night by the sound of Soviet aircraft landing. Both were subsequently dismissed from their jobs: his wife Věra, a radio and television announcer, in 1969, and Milan a year later. They lived under police surveillance, their telephone was tapped, and Milan Kundera was forbidden to publish; his books were banned. We can relive their fate through Kundera’s novels. For instance, Tomáš and Tereza, the protagonists of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, experience a similar situation. Tomáš is a brilliant neurosurgeon, but because of an “ideologically objectionable” article published in a literary journal, he loses his position and is forced to earn a living as a window washer. The persecution inflicted by the communist regime leaves profound scars on them both, and they ultimately find peace only after retreating to the countryside. From the summer of 1975 onward, the Kunderas lived in exile in France, where Milan taught at the universities in Rennes and Paris. They did not return to Prague until 1990, a quarter of a century later, and then only as visitors. Milan Kundera continued to live in Paris until his death. Věra, who shared the rest of her life with him, devoted herself to preserving his legacy after his passing. Totalitarianism deprived Milan Kundera of Prague, and Prague of Milan Kundera, because every totalitarian regime transforms the lightness of being into an unbearable existence. Cover photo: ČTK, Oldřich Škácha