Kundera, Milan 1929–

Kundera is a Czech poet, novelist, short story writer, musician, and filmmaker. Because of Communist censorship of his writing, Kundera left Czechoslovakia and now lives in France. He uses political satire and comedy to express his anguish. His The Book of Laughter and Forgetting received especially high praise for its original style; Pearl K. Bell termed it a literature of "surrealist compression." (See also CLC, Vols. 4, 9, and Contemporary Authors, Vols. 85-88.)