Milan Kundera, renowned but reclusive Czech writer and former dissident, dies in Paris at 94

By ELAINE GANLEY and LORI HINNANT
Associated Press

PARIS (AP) — Milan Kundera, whose dissident writings in communist Czechoslovakia transformed him into an exiled satirist of totalitarianism, has died in Paris. He was 94. Kundera’s most famous work, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,’’ opens wrenchingly with Soviet tanks rolling through Prague, the Czech capital that was the author’s home until he moved to France in 1975. In 1989, the Velvet Revolution pushed Communists from power and Kundera’s nation was reborn as the Czech Republic, but by then he had made a new life — and a complete identity — in his attic apartment on Paris’ Left Bank. Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala tweeted that Kundera was a writer who was able to reach generations of readers across all continents with his work and achieved world fame.