Milan Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, dies aged 94

Milan Kundera, one of the biggest names in European literature in recent decades, has died in Paris aged 94.
His best-known work was his 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Anna Mrazova, a spokeswoman for the Milan Kundera Library in his home city of Brno in the Czech Republic, said he had died after a long illness.
He was a towering figure in Czech literature but his scathing criticism of Czechoslovakia’s communist regime saw him flee for France in 1975.
A poetic and satirical author, Kundera’s novels won praise for their observation of both politics and everyday life.
Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said his work reached “whole generations of readers across all continents and achieved global fame”.
“He leaves behind not only notable fiction, but also significant essay work.”
Born in 1929 into an elite Czech family, his father was a piano teacher and a student of the composer Janacek, and ensured Kundera received musical training at an advanced level.
Kundera studied in Prague, becoming a lecturer in world literature. He joined the ruling Communist Party and initially he was an ardent member.
But his writing soon got him into political trouble. His first novel The Joke – a black comedy published in 1967 – led to a ban on his writing in Czechoslovakia.
In 1970 he was asked to leave the party after expressing support for the Prague Spring movement, the period of political liberalisation crushed by the 1968 Soviet invasion.
Kundera’s activism led to his dismissal from his teaching post and his novels were removed from public libraries, while the sale of his work was banned until the fall of the Communist government in 1989.
For a short time he performed as jazz trumpeter, before emigrating to France in 1975 with his wife Vera, settling first in Rennes then Paris. He became a naturalised French citizen in 1981, two years after he was stripped of his Czech nationality, and eventually wrote in French.