The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Czech-born literary giant Milan Kundera died on July 11, aged 94, at his Paris home. Born in Brno, Kundera played a significant role in the intellectual revival that culminated in the Prague Spring in the late 60s. In 1975, with his work banned amid the "normalisation" imposed on Czechoslovak society by the Communist authorities, the author decamped to France in exile.

Milan Kundera, whose dissident writings in communist Czechoslovakia transformed him into an exiled satirist of totalitarianism, has died in Paris at the age of 94, Czech media said on July 12.