In the following essay, C  ulik examines Kundera's work in the context of his life.

Milan Kundera is a major contemporary French/Czech writer who has succeeded in communicating the East European experience of life under totalitarian communism to a wide international public. Most recently, he has used his experience of life both in the East and in the West for commenting on contemporary Western civilization. Milan Kundera's knowledge of life in Czechoslovakia under Soviet rule has led him to important insights regarding the human condition of people living both in the East and in the West. Since Kundera moved to France in 1975, he has become an author of considerable international renown.

In Czechoslovakia after World War II, Kundera was a member of the young, idealist communist generation who were trying to bring about a "paradise on Earth," a communist utopia. It was not until their...