The Joke
The foundational early novel and a direct introduction to Kundera's irony, political history, and concerns with fate.
Author guide
Milan Kundera Books in Order
Milan Kundera (1929–2023) was a Czech-born French writer whose career moved from early poetry and drama to celebrated novels, short fiction, and literary essays. His major works include The Joke, Life Is Elsewhere, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Immortality, Slowness, Identity, Ignorance, and The Festival of Insignificance. He also wrote influential essays on the novel and European culture, including The Art of the Novel, Testaments Betrayed, The Curtain, and Encounter. He wrote in Czech until the early 1990s and thereafter primarily in French.
novelsshort fictionliterary essayspoetrydramaliterary criticismnonfiction
Catalog record updated .
Not sure where to begin?
Start with one of these
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
His most widely known novel and an accessible entry to his mature treatment of love, identity, history, and philosophical reflection.
The Art of the Novel
A concise introduction to Kundera's ideas about the novel, European literary tradition, and his own artistic practice.
Outside the series
Bibliography by category
Novels (10)
- The Joke
novel · 1967
All too often, this brilliant novel of thwarted love and revenge miscarried has been read for its political implications. Now, a quarter century after The Joke was first published and several years after the collapse of the Soviet-imposed…
- Life Is Elsewhere
novel · 1973
The author initially intended to call this novel The Lyrical Age. The lyrical age, according to Kundera, is youth, and this novel, above all, is an epic of adolescence; an ironic epic that tenderly erodes sacrosanct values: childhood,…
- The Farewell Waltz
novel · 1976
- The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
novel · 1979
Rich in its stories, characters, and imaginative range, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is the novel that brought Milan Kundera his first big international success in the late 1970s. Like all his work, it is valuable for far more than…
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being
novel · 1984
Interweaves story and dream, past and present, and philosophy and poetry in a sardonic and erotic tale of two couples--Tomas and Teresa, and Sabina and her Swiss lover, Gerhart.
- Immortality
novel · 1990
Milan Kundera's sixth novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman to her swimming instructor, a gesture that creates a character in the mind of a writer named Kundera. Like Flaubert's Emma or Tolstoy's Anna, Kundera's Agnes becomes an…
- Slowness
novel · 1995
After the gravity of The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Immortality, Slowness comes as a surprise: it is certainly Kundera's lightest novel, a divertimento, an opera buffa, with, as the author himself says, "not a single serious word…
- Identity
novel · 1998
Sometimes - perhaps only for an instant - we fail to recognise a companion; for a moment their identity ceases to exist, and thus we come to doubt our own. The effect is at its most acute in a couple where our existence is given meaning…
- Ignorance
novel · 2000
Irena and Josef meet by chance while returning to their Czech homeland, which they had abandoned 20 years earlier when they chose to become exiles. Will they manage to pick up the thread of their strange love story, interrupted almost as…
- The Festival of Insignificance
novella · 2014
Casting light on the most serious of problems and at the same time saying not one serious sentence; being fascinated by the reality of the contemporary world and at the same time completely avoiding realism--that's *The Festival of…
Short fiction (3)
- Laughable Loves
short-story collection · 1963
Laughable Loves is a collection of stories that first appeared in print in Prague before 1968, but was then banned. The seven stories are all concerned with love, or rather with the complex erotic games and stratagems employed by women…
- The Second Notebook of Laughable Loves
short-story collection · 1965
- The Third Notebook of Laughable Loves
short-story collection · 1968
Essays and speeches (7)
- On the Disputes of Inheritance
essay · 1955
- The Art of the Novel: Vladislav Vancura's Path to the Great Epic
literary essay · 1960
- The Art of the Novel
essay collection · 1986
A work of literary criticism in which Kundera argues that the European novel is born out of the laughter of God.
- Testaments Betrayed
essay collection · 1993
Testaments Betrayed is written like a novel: the same characters appear and reappear throughout the nine parts of the book, as do the principal themes that preoccupy the author. Kundera once again celebrates the art of the novel, from its…
- D'en bas tu humeras les roses
illustrated essay · 1993
- The Curtain
essay collection · 2005
In this entertaining and always stimulating collection of seven essays, Kundera deftly sketches out his personal view of the history and value of the novel. Too often, he suggests, a novel is thought about only within the confines of the…
- Encounter
essay collection · 2009
Milan Kundera’s brilliant new collection of essays is a passionate defense of art in an era that, he argues, no longer values art or beauty. With the same dazzling mix of emotion and ideas that characterizes his bestselling novels, the…
Poetry (3)
- Man: A Wide Garden
poetry collection · 1953
- The Last May
poetry collection · 1955
- Monologues
poetry collection · 1957
Plays (4)
- The Owners of the Keys
play · 1962
- Two Ears, Two Weddings
play · 1968
- The Blunder
play · 1969
- Jacques and His Master
play · 1981
Frequently asked questions about Milan Kundera
Who was Milan Kundera?
Milan Kundera (1929-2023) was a Czech-born French novelist, essayist, playwright, and poet. He became an internationally influential late-twentieth-century writer whose fiction examined politics, memory, identity, and existence.
Sources: brno.cz (opens in a new tab)elysee.fr (opens in a new tab)
Where was Milan Kundera born, and was he Czech or French?
He was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, in 1929. After moving to France in 1975, he became a French citizen in 1981; Czech citizenship was restored in 2019, which is why he is commonly described as Czech-French.
Sources: brno.cz (opens in a new tab)europarl.europa.eu (opens in a new tab)theguardian.com (opens in a new tab)
How did political repression and exile affect Kundera's career?
After the 1968 invasion and subsequent political normalization, he lost his teaching position, his books were removed from libraries, and he could no longer publish in Czechoslovakia. In French exile, he revised earlier Czech works into French and later wrote in French.
Sources: theguardian.com (opens in a new tab)theguardian.com (opens in a new tab)
What influenced Milan Kundera's writing?
Kundera named Robert Musil and Hermann Broch among the novelists closest to him, and he admired Czech composer Leoš Janáček. More broadly, his idea of the European novel was tied to the traditions of Cervantes, Musil, and Kafka.
Sources: theparisreview.org (opens in a new tab)elysee.fr (opens in a new tab)mzm.cz (opens in a new tab)
What awards did Milan Kundera receive, and what is his literary legacy?
His honors included the Jerusalem Prize in 1985, Austria's State Prize for European Literature in 1987, and the Franz Kafka Prize in 2020. His work helped spur broad debate about Central Europe and European identity and is regarded by cultural institutions as part of the modern world literary canon.
Sources: mzm.cz (opens in a new tab)bmwkms.gv.at (opens in a new tab)theguardian.com (opens in a new tab)europarl.europa.eu (opens in a new tab)elysee.fr (opens in a new tab)