Milan Kundera 'joyfully' accepts Czech Republic's Franz Kafka prize

By Dilip -

Milan Kundera, whose Czech citizenship was restored last year after he had spent more than 40 years in exile, has won one of the Czech Republic’s most prestigious literary awards, the Franz Kafka prize. The $10,000 (£7,800) award, organised by the Franz Kafka Society and the city of Prague, is chosen by an international jury. Franz Kafka Society chairman Vladimír Železný said Kundera won for his “extraordinary contribution to Czech culture”, and for an “unmissable response” in European and world culture. According to Železný, when the 91-year-old Kundera was reached by phone, the author said he “joyfully” accepted the prize, particularly because of his admiration of Kafka.

Kundera was expelled for “anti-communist activities” from the Czechoslovakian party in 1950. He became a hate figure for the authorities and eventually fled to France in 1975. His Czech citizenship was revoked in 1979 following the publication of his novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, which saw him describe then-Czechoslovak president Gustáv Husák as “the president of forgetting”, and he became a French citizen in 1981. Some of his best-known works, including The Unbearable Lightness of Being, were banned in his homeland until the late 80's, while the 1988 novel Immortality was his last novel written in Czech. He has written in French ever since…

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/22/milan-kundera-joyfully-accepts-czech-republics-franz-kafka-prize

The Tremendous World I Have Inside My Head: Franz Kafka: A Biographical Essay

Kafka: An End or a Beginning?

Books reviewed - Lost in Transformation: biographies of Franz Kafka

'Before the Law' - a parable by Franz Kafka

Ilya Erenburg: The Thaw (Novyi mir Spring 1954)

A Hunger Artist - by Franz Kafka (1922)


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