Milan Kundera is overwhelmed by his origins

Kundera lives and writes in France.© dpa
Kundera lives and writes in France.© dpa

Prague / Paris. Milan Kundera, a world-renowned writer, has been living in France for more than 40 years. Since 1981, he is a French citizen. Since 1993, the language walker has written in French. And yet, the 89-year-old novelist has caught up with his Czech roots again.

It began with a visit by Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis to the centenary of the end of the First World War in Paris. Like other heads of state before him, Babis visited the most famous living Czech exiles. Less discreet than his predecessors, Babis has expressed his enthusiasm in social media.

"It's an experience for a lifetime," writes the 64-year-old. He had invited Kundera and his wife to the Czech Republic, where they had not been for a long time. "I think they deserve the Czech citizenship that they lost after their emigration," commented Babis, probably unaware that he would begin a debate with her.

In 1973 (below), he left home forever.© dpa / efe, afp
In 1973 (below), he left home forever.© dpa / efe, afp

The government machine in Prague started to move. It soon became clear that you do not get your citizenship back, not even Milan Kundera. You must make the request. "As far as I know, Kundera has never asked the Czech authorities anything," said French political scientist Jacques Rupnik.

In the Czech Republic "absent"
The socialist leaders of former Czechoslovakia had expatriated Kundera in 1979, in response to the critical novel "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting". The author, born in Brno (Brno) and a member of the Communist Party until 1970, was already living in France for four years.

Even after the democratization of 1989, Kundera remained "absent" in the Czech Republic, as one critic pointed out. The relationships of his home country with the featured author are complicated. A few years ago, charges were laid that Kundera would have delivered a fellow-student to the Communists in the 1950s. He categorically rejected this. At that time, a Parisian newspaper had raised the exaggerated question: "Why do the Czechs hate Kundera?"

Literary emigration
The professor of Romance languages, Petr Kylousek of the University of Brno, sees the reason for the conflict in the author's efforts for "cosmopolitanism". The emigration of Kundera in France was not only political but also literary. He wanted to conquer Paris as a world metropolis, to which he had succeeded.