Writing style and philosophy
François Ricard suggested that Kundera conceived his fiction with regard to the overall body of his work, rather than limiting his ideas to the scope of just one novel at a time, his themes and meta-themes traversing his entire œuvre. Each new book manifests the latest stage of his personal philosophy. Some of these meta-themes include exile, identity, life beyond the border (beyond love, beyond art, beyond seriousness), history as a continual return, and the pleasure of a less "important" life.[40][verification needed]
Many of Kundera's characters seem to develop as expositions of one of these themes at the expense of their full humanity. Specifics in regard to the characters tend to be rather vague. Often, more than one main character is used in a novel; Kundera may have even completely discontinued a character, resuming the plot with somebody new. As he told Philip Roth in an interview in The Village Voice: "Intimate life [is] understood as one's personal secret, as something valuable, inviolable, the basis of one's originality".[41]
Kundera's early novels explore the dual tragic and comic aspects of totalitarianism. He did not view his works, however, as political commentary. "The condemnation of totalitarianism doesn't deserve a novel", he said. According to the Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes, "What he finds interesting is the similarity between totalitarianism and the immemorial and fascinating dream of a harmonious society where private life and public life form but one unity and all are united around one will and one faith". In exploring the dark humour of this topic, Kundera seems deeply influenced by Franz Kafka.[28]
Kundera considered himself a writer without a message. In Sixty-three Words, a chapter in The Art of the Novel, Kundera tells of a Scandinavian publisher who hesitated to publish The Farewell Party because of its apparent anti-abortion message. Not only was the publisher wrong about the existence of such a message, Kundera explained, but, "I was delighted with the misunderstanding. I had succeeded as a novelist. I succeeded in maintaining the moral ambiguity of the situation. I had kept faith with the essence of the novel as an art: irony. And irony doesn't give a damn about messages!".[42]
Kundera also ventured often into musical matters, analyzing Czech folk music for example; or quoting from Leoš Janáček and Bartók; or placing musical excerpts into the text, as in The Joke;[43] or discussing Schoenberg and atonality.[44]
The Festival of Insignificance
The 2014 novel focuses on the musings of four male friends living in Paris who discuss their relationships with women and the existential predicament confronting individuals in the world, among other things. The novel received generally negative reviews. Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times describes the book as being a "knowing, pre-emptive joke about its own superficiality".[38] A review in the Economist stated that the book was "sadly let down by a tone of breezy satire that can feel forced".[39]
Miroslav Dvořáček controversy
On 13 October 2008, the Czech weekly Respekt reported that an investigation was being carried out by the state-funded historical archive and research Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes,[45] into whether a young Kundera had denounced a returned defector, Miroslav Dvořáček, to the StB, or Czechoslovak secret police, in 1950.[46] The accusation was based on a police station report which named "Milan Kundera, student, born 1.4.1929" as the informant in regard to Dvořáček's presence at a student dormitory.[47] But the report did not include his ID card number, which was usually included, nor his signature.[47] According to the police report, the ultimate source of the information about Dvořáček's previous desertion from military service and defection to the West was Iva Militká.[46]
Dvořáček had allegedly fled Czechoslovakia after being ordered to join the infantry in the wake of a purge of the flight academy, and returned to Czechoslovakia as an agent of an anti-communist espionage agency organised by Czechoslovak exiles, an allegation which was not mentioned in the police report.[46] Dvořáček returned secretly to the student dormitory of a friend's ex-girlfriend, Iva Militká. Militká was dating and later married a fellow student, Ivan Dlask, who knew Kundera.[46] The police report alleges that Militká told Dlask of Dvořáček's presence, and that Dlask told Kundera, who told the secret police.[46] Although the prosecutor sought the death penalty, Dvořáček was sentenced to 22 years of hard labour, fined 10,000 crowns, stripped of personal property, and deprived of his civic rights for ten years.[46] Dvořáček served 14 years in a labor camp, some of it working in a uranium mine, before he was released.[48]
In his response to Respekt's announcement, Kundera denied turning Dvořáček into the StB,[48] stating he never knew him at all, and could not even remember an individual named "Militká".[49] On 14 October 2008, the Czech Security Forces Archive announced that they had ruled out the possibility that the document could be a forgery, but refused to arrive at any other definite conclusions.[50] Vojtech Ripka of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes said, "There are two pieces of circumstantial evidence [the police report and its sub-file], but we, of course, cannot be one hundred percent sure. Unless we find all survivors, which is unfortunately impossible, it will not be complete." Ripka added that the signature on the police report matches the name of a man who worked in the corresponding National Security Corps section and that a police protocol is missing.[50]
Many in the Czech Republic condemned Kundera as a "police informer", while many others accused Respekt of committing journalistic misconduct by publishing such a poorly researched piece. On the other hand, presenting an ID card was a procedure whenever dealing with the StB in 1950. Kundera was the student representative of the dorm Dvořáček had visited, and while it cannot be ruled out that another student could have denounced him to the StB using Kundera's name,[47] impersonating someone else in a Stalinist police state posed a significant risk. Contradictory statements by Kundera's fellow students appeared in the Czech news media in the wake of this scandal. Historian Adam Hradílek, the co-author of the Respekt article, was also accused of an undeclared conflict of interest since one of the individuals involved in the incident was his aunt.[47] Nonetheless, Respekt states on its website that its task is to "impartially study the crimes of the former communist regime".[51] With time, the Western journalists realized the whole controversy was flawed, with French newspapers defending Kundera.[47] The literary scholar Karen de Kunes investigated the reports and came to the conclusion that even if Kundera had issued the report, all he reported was the existence of a suitcase in the hallway.[47]
On 3 November 2008, eleven internationally recognized writers came to Kundera's defence, including four Nobel laureates, Orhan Pamuk, Gabriel García Márquez, Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee, as well as Carlos Fuentes, Juan Goytisolo, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, and Jorge Semprún.[52]
In 1973, Life Is Elsewhere received the French Prix Médicis.[33] In 1979 Kundera was awarded the Mondello Prize for The Farewell Party.[53] In 1985, Kundera received the Jerusalem Prize.[15] His acceptance address appears among the essays collected in The Art of the Novel. He won The Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 1987. In 2000, he was awarded the international Herder Prize. In 2007, he was awarded the Czech State Literature Prize.[54] In 2009, he was awarded the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. In 2010, he was made an honorary citizen of his hometown, Brno.[55] When he died the Greek Newspaper Efimerida ton Syntakton (Journal of the editors) published a special section where all the current affairs on each page were described with a book title of Kundera's.[56]
In 2011, he received the Ovid Prize.[57] The asteroid 7390 Kundera, discovered at the Kleť Observatory in 1983, is named in his honour.[58] In 2020, he was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize, a Czech literary award.[59]
Stripped of Czechoslovak citizenship in 1979, Kundera became a French citizen in 1981.[60] He maintained contact with Czech and Slovak friends in his homeland,[61] but rarely returned and never with any fanfare.[4] He was granted Czech citizenship in 2019.[62] He saw himself as a French writer and insisted his work should be studied as French literature and classified as such in bookstores.[63]
Kundera was married twice. His first wife was the singer Olga Haasová-Smrčková (1937–2022), daughter of composer Pavel Haas,[15] whom he married in 1956.[64] His second marriage was to Věra Hrabánková (1935–2024),[65] whom he married in 1967.[10] Vera reportedly was his secretary, translator of his works and the gatekeeper between Kundera and the outside world.[10]
Kundera died after a prolonged illness, in Paris on 11 July 2023, at the age of 94.[66][67] He was cremated in Paris on 19 July 2023.[68]
Book reviews; interviews
Awards received by Milan Kundera
Terjadi kesalahan. Tunggu sebentar dan coba lagi.
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Istilah Viking sering mengundang rasa penasaran, terutama bagi yang tertarik dengan sejarah. Namun, apa sebenarnya yang tersembunyi di balik kata tersebut? Mari kita gali lebih dalam mengenai asal-usul, arti sebenarnya, serta jejak budaya, dan pengaruhnya.
Baca berita dengan sedikit iklan, klik di sini
Viking, yang juga dikenal sebagai Norseman atau Northman, merupakan anggota kelompok pejuang laut dari Skandinavia yang merajalela dan menjajah sebagian besar wilayah Eropa dari abad ke-9 hingga ke-11.
Dikutip dari The Converstion, asal usul nama 'Viking' tidaklah pasti. Mungkin berasal dari kata Norse Kuno 'vík', yang artinya 'teluk', merujuk pada tempat asal mereka di tepi laut. Ini juga bisa berasal dari Bahasa Inggris Kuno 'wc', yang berarti 'kemah', mengacu pada perkemahan sementara saat penjarahan.
Mereka berbicara dalam bahasa Old Norse, yang memberikan pengaruh besar pada bahasa Inggris karena pemukiman mereka di utara Inggris. Prasasti runik adalah catatan tulisan awal mereka, sering kali diukir di benda-benda dan dinding. Namun, sumber utama tentang budaya mereka adalah sagas, yang merupakan cerita sejarah mereka yang tercampur antara fakta dan legenda, ditulis pada abad ke-13 di Islandia.
Pengaruh mereka yang mengganggu ini secara mendalam mempengaruhi sejarah Eropa. Bangsa Denmark, Norwegia, dan Swedia yang beragama pagan ini mungkin terdorong untuk melakukan penjarahan oleh kombinasi faktor seperti kelebihan penduduk di tanah air dan kerentanannya korbannya di luar negeri.
Menurut Britannica, Viking terdiri dari para kepala suku pemilik tanah dan pemimpin klan, pengiring mereka, orang merdeka, serta anggota muda yang penuh semangat dari keluarga suku yang mencari petualangan dan jarahan di luar negeri. Di kampung halaman, mereka adalah petani yang mandiri, tetapi di laut, mereka adalah para perampok dan penjarah.
Selama periode Viking, negara-negara Skandinavia tampaknya memiliki surplus tenaga kerja yang praktis tak terbatas, dan para pemimpin yang berbakat yang bisa mengorganisir kelompok pejuang menjadi pasukan penakluk dan tentara, jarang sekali kurang.
Dilansir dari History Today, bangsa Viking dikenal sebagai penjarah dan perompak abad pertengahan yang menakutkan, namun juga sebagai penjelajah dan pelaut ulung. Mereka menjelajah ke Eropa, Asia, Afrika utara, dan Newfoundland.
Mereka membentuk rute perdagangan global dan menetap di berbagai wilayah, termasuk Britania, Irlandia, dan Franka, serta membentuk kerajaan Kievan Rs di Sungai Volga. Meskipun awalnya pagan, mereka kemudian berpindah agama dan membangun gereja kayu indah di Skandinavia.
Pasukan ini akan menavigasi lautan dengan kapal panjang mereka dan melancarkan serangan kilat ke kota-kota dan desa-desa di sepanjang pantai Eropa. Pembakaran, penjarahan, dan pembunuhan yang mereka lakukan membuat mereka diberi julukan víkingr, yang berarti "bajak laut" dalam bahasa Skandinavia awal.
Komposisi etnis yang tepat dari pasukan Viking tidak diketahui dalam kasus tertentu, tetapi ekspansi Viking di tanah Baltik dan Rusia dapat dengan wajar dikaitkan dengan orang Swedia. Di tempat lain, kolonisasi nonmiliter Kepulauan Orkney, Kepulauan Faroe, dan Islandia jelas dilakukan oleh orang Norwegia.
Di Inggris, penjarahan oleh Viking dimulai pada akhir abad ke-8 (terutama serangan terhadap biara Lindisfarne pada 793), tetapi lebih serius dimulai pada ]865, ketika pasukan yang dipimpin oleh putra-putra Ragnar Lothbrok menaklukkan kerajaan-kerajaan kuno di East Anglia dan Northumbria dan membuat Mercia menjadi pecahan dari ukurannya sebelumnya.
Konsekuensi penaklukan Viking di Inggris meninggalkan bekas yang dalam di wilayah yang terkena dampaknya, seperti struktur sosial, dialek, nama tempat, dan nama pribadi.
Secara keseluruhan, Viking adalah kelompok yang memiliki reputasi kompleks dalam sejarah. Mereka bukan hanya sekadar penjarah dan perompak, tetapi juga penjelajah yang mahir dalam pelayaran. Meskipun awalnya terkenal dengan serangan mengerikan, mereka juga berperan dalam membentuk jalur perdagangan global dan membangun pemukiman di berbagai belahan dunia.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Kundera's most famous work, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, was published in 1984. The book chronicles the fragile nature of an individual's fate, theorizing that a single lifetime is insignificant in the scope of Nietzsche's concept of eternal return. In an infinite universe, everything is guaranteed to recur infinitely. In 1988, American director Philip Kaufman released a film adaptation, which Kundera disliked.[17] The book focuses on the life of a Czech dissident surgeon's journey from Prague to Zurich and his return to Prague, where he was not permitted to take up work as a surgeon.[31] He worked instead as a window washer and used his job to arrange sex with hundreds of women.[31] At the end he and his wife move to the country.[31] The book was not published in Czechoslovakia due to Kundera's fear it would be badly edited. He eventually delayed the publishing date for years and only in 2006 would an official translation be available in the Czech language.[31] The book had previously been available in Czech, however, as a Czech expatriate in Canada had translated the book in 1985.[31]
In 2000, Ignorance was published. The novel centres on the romance of two alienated Czech émigrés, two decades after the Prague Spring of 1968. It is thematically concerned with the suffering of emigration. In it, Kundera undermines the myths surrounding nostalgia and the émigré's longing for return. He concludes that in the "etymological light nostalgia seems something like the pain of ignorance, of not knowing." Kundera suggests a complex relationship between memory and nostalgia, writing that our memory can "create rifts both with our earlier selves and between people who ostensibly share a past." The main characters of Irena and Josef discover how emigration and forgetfulness have ultimately freed them from their pain. Kundera draws heavily from the myth of Odysseus, specifically the "mythology of home, the delusions of roots."[35][36] Linda Asher translated the original French version of the novel to English in 2002.[37]
Seringkali kita berfikir, bagaimana untuk mengetahui sesebuah iPhone yang dimiliki ini sebenarnya dijual untuk pasaran negara yang mana? Seperti yang sedia maklum, peranti iPhone ini dijual di kebanyakan negara-negara di seluruh dunia. Sebagai pengguna, Model Name/Part No. ialah sangat penting untuk mengetahui di mana iPhone itu sepatutnya dijual dan dipasarkan. Ia juga boleh membantu kita membuat kesimpulan sama ada ianya sesuai digunakan di Malaysia ataupun tidak.
Apakah maksud Model Name/Part No. ini?
Model Name/Part No. ini merupakan suatu label kod identifikasi. Dengan kod kod tersebut kita boleh mengetahui jenis, model, kapasiti, warna dan negara yang sepatutnya peranti itu dijual.
Bagaimana untuk mencari Model Name/Part No. ini? Sebenarnya ada banyak cara, saya tunjukkan dua cara yang mudah terlebih dahulu seperti di bawah.
Sebagai contoh kod yang tertera pada gambar di atas ialah MC319LL/A. Dari situ kita boleh mengetahui bahawa:
1. Kod huruf pertama ‘M’
Untuk bahagian kod huruf yang pertama, ‘M’ membawakan maksud iPhone tersebut dijual samada melalui kedai rasmi Apple Store, laman jualan rasmi dalam talian Apple atau wakil penjual rasmi Apple. Selain itu, terdapat empat lagi variasi huruf dan nombor mengikut iPhone tertentu atau unik yang boleh didapati di pasaran seperti contoh di bawah:
2. Kod huruf kedua ‘C’
Bagi kod huruf yang kedua ini, saya dapati ianya berubah-ubah mengikut batch model iPhone. Namun ia tidaklah tetap atau kekal kepada satu model sahaja. Sebagai contoh, kebanyakannya:
3. Kod nombor ketiga ‘319’
Bagi kod ketiga ialah kod nombor yang digunakan untuk mengenalpasti model, jenis, kapasiti dan warna iPhone berkenaan. Untuk senarai penuh mengikut model iPhone yang anda gunakan, boleh rujuk pada artikel Senarai Kod Untuk Mengenalpasti Jenis, Kapasiti dan Warna iPhone ini.
4. Kod huruf keempat ‘LL’
Kod huruf yang keempat ialah kod negara atau daerah (region). Setiap kod ini melambangkan negara atau daerah yang dikhaskan bagi sesebuah iPhone itu untuk dipasarkan dan dijual yang dilabel, disusun dan dirangkakan oleh Apple. Penjualan peranti mengikut negara atau daerah menggunakan kod ini ialah untuk bagi mengelakkan daripada pelbagai jenis peranti dicampur aduk serta dijual di negara yang tidak sepatutnya.
Seperti contoh, iPhone dan peranti Apple yang lain serta peranti elektronik yang mempunyai kamera dan dijual di negara Jepun tidak boleh disenyapkan bunyi pengatup kamera walaupun suis senyap pada bahagian tepi telah diaktifkan seperti yang termaktub di bawah undang-undang negara tersebut. Ini adalah menghindarkan perbuatan tidak senonoh yang dilakukan oleh penyumbaleweng seperti menangkap gambar di bawah skirt pelajar perempuan yang sering dilaporkan berlaku di dalam tren.
Oleh itu, adalah tidak logik untuk iPhone bernegarakan Jepun ini untuk dijual di negara Asia yang lain. Terdapat juga beberapa buah negara yang mengamalkan undang-undang seperti ini, untuk penerangan terperinci dan maksud yang lebih lanjut anda boleh membaca artikel Ketahui Ciri iOS Yang Dibuang Pada iPhone Mengikut Negara Asal Dijual ini.
Czech and French novelist (1929–2023)
Milan Kundera ( KU(U)N-dər-ə;[1][2] Czech: [ˈmɪlan ˈkundɛra] ⓘ; 1 April 1929 – 11 July 2023) was a Czech and French novelist. Kundera went into exile in France in 1975, acquiring citizenship in 1981. His Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked in 1979, but he was granted Czech citizenship in 2019.[3]
Kundera's best-known work is The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Before the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the country's ruling Communist Party of Czechoslovakia banned his books. He led a low-profile life and rarely spoke to the media.[4] He was thought to be a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature and was also a nominee for other awards.[5][6]
Kundera was awarded the Jerusalem Prize in 1985, the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 1987, and the Herder Prize in 2000. In 2021, he received the Golden Order of Merit from the president of Slovenia, Borut Pahor.[7]
Early life and education
Milan Kundera was born on 1 April 1929 at Purkyňova 6 (6 Purkyně Street) in Královo Pole, a district of Brno, Czechoslovakia (present-day Czech Republic), to a middle-class family. His father, Ludvík Kundera (1891–1971), was an important Czech musicologist and pianist who served as the head of the Janáček Music Academy in Brno from 1948 to 1961.[8][9][10] His mother Milada Kunderová (born Janošíková)[11] was an educator.[10] His father died in 1971, and his mother in 1975.[10]
Kundera learned to play the piano from his father and later studied musicology and musical composition. Musicological influences, references and notation can be found throughout his work. Kundera was a cousin of Czech writer and translator Ludvík Kundera.[12] In his youth, having been supported by his father in his musical education, he was testing his abilities as a composer.[13][14] One of his teachers at the time was Pavel Haas.[15] His approach to music was eventually dampened due to his father not being able to launch a piano career for insisting on playing the music of modernist Jewish composer Arnold Schoenberg.[14]
At the age of eighteen, he joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1947.[16] In 1984, he recalled that "Communism captivated me as much as Stravinsky, Picasso and Surrealism."[17]
He attended lectures on music and composition at the Charles University in Prague but soon moved to the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU) to study film.[18] In 1950, he was expelled from the party.[13] After graduating, the Film Faculty appointed Kundera a lecturer in world literature in 1952.[19] Following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, he lost his job at the Film Faculty.[20] In 1956, Kundera also married for the first time, the operetta singer Olga Haas, the daughter of the composer and his teacher Pavel Haas and the doctor of Russian origin Sonia Jakobson, the first wife of Roman Jakobson.[21][22]
Political activism and professional career
His expulsion from the Communist party was described by Jan Trefulka in his novella Pršelo jim štěstí (Luck Rained on Them, 1962).[19] Kundera also used the expulsion as an inspiration for the main theme of his novel Žert (The Joke, 1967),[19] in which he ridiculed the ruling Communist party.[20] In 1956 Kundera was readmitted to the party but was expelled for a second time in 1970.[14][23] He took part in the Fourth Congress of the Czech Writers union in June 1967, where he delivered an impressive speech.[24] In the speech he focused on the Czech effort to maintain a certain cultural independence among its larger European neighbours.[24] Along with other reformist Communist writers such as Pavel Kohout, he was peripherally involved in the 1968 Prague Spring. This brief period of reformist activities was crushed by the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. Kundera remained committed to reforming Czechoslovak Communism, and argued vehemently in print with fellow Czech writer Václav Havel, saying, essentially, that everyone should remain calm and that "nobody is being locked up for his opinions yet," and "the significance of the Prague Autumn may ultimately be greater than that of the Prague Spring." In 1968, the year his books were banned by the Czech Government, he made his first journey to Paris, where he befriended the publisher Claude Gallimard.[14] After he returned to Prague, he was frequently visited by Gallimard who encouraged Kundera to emigrate to France and also smuggled the manuscript for Life Is Elsewhere out of Czechoslovakia.[14] Finally, Kundera gave in and moved to France in 1975.[14] In 1979, his Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked.[17] He lectured for a few years at the University of Rennes.[14][23] After three years, he moved to Paris.[14]
Although his early poetic works are staunchly pro-communist,[25][26] his novels escape ideological classification. Kundera repeatedly insisted that he was a novelist rather than a politically motivated writer. Political commentary all but disappeared from his novels after the publication of The Unbearable Lightness of Being except in relation to broader philosophical themes. Kundera's style of fiction, interlaced with philosophical digression, was greatly inspired by the novels of Robert Musil and the philosophy of Nietzsche.[27] In 1945 the journal Gong published his translation of some of the works from the Russian poet Vladimir Majakovsky.[19] The next year the journal Mladé archy printed a poem of his, to which he was inspired by his cousin Ludvík Kundera, also a writer.[19]
In the mid-1950s he was readmitted to the Communist party and he was able to publish Manː A Wide Garden in 1953, a long epic poem in 1955 called The Last May dedicated to Julius Fucik and the collection of lyrical poetry Monologue in 1957.[13] Those, together with other fore and afterwords are deemed to be written in the fashion of uncontroversial propaganda which allowed him to benefit to a certain degree from the advantages that came with being an established writer in a Communist environment.[13] In 1962 he wrote the play The Owners of the Keys, which became an international success and was translated into several languages.[13] Kundera himself claimed inspiration from Renaissance authors such as Giovanni Boccaccio, Rabelais and, perhaps most importantly, Miguel de Cervantes, to whose legacy he considered himself most committed. Other influences include Laurence Sterne, Henry Fielding, Denis Diderot, Robert Musil, Witold Gombrowicz, Hermann Broch, Franz Kafka, Martin Heidegger and Georges Bataille.[28] Originally he wrote in the Czech language, but from 1985 onwards, he made a conscious transition from Czech towards the French which has since become the reference language for his translations.[13] Between 1985 and 1987, he undertook the revision of the French translations of his earlier works himself. With Slowness his first work in French was published in 1995.[29] His works were translated into more than eighty languages.[13]
In his first novel, The Joke (1967), he satirized the totalitarianism of the Communist era.[30] Following the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, the book was banned.[20] His criticism of the Soviet invasion in 1968 led to his blacklisting[19] in Czechoslovakia and the banning[31] of his books.
Kundera's second novel was first published in French as La vie est ailleurs in 1973 and in Czech as Život je jinde in 1979. Life Is Elsewhere is a satirical portrait of the fictional poet Jaromil, a young and very naïve idealist who becomes involved in political scandals.[32] For the novel Kundera was awarded the Prix Médicis the same year.[33]
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
In 1975, Kundera moved to France where The Book of Laughter and Forgetting was published in 1979.[13] An unusual mixture of novel, short story collection, and authorial musings which came to characterize his works in exile, the book dealt with how Czechs opposed the Communist regime in various ways. Critics noted that the Czechoslovakia Kundera portrays "is, thanks to the latest political redefinitions, no longer precisely there," which is the "kind of disappearance and reappearance" Kundera ironically explores in the book.[34]
