Famous Czech-born writer Milan Kundera, who has lived in France since 1975, has regained Czech citizenship after forty years.
The 90-year-old Milan Kundera received the formal Czech citizenship certificate from the Czech ambassador in France, Petr Drulák. The civil ceremony took place in Kundera’s Paris apartment on Nov. 28 and, according to Drulák, Kundera was very pleased.
Kundera lost Czech citizenship in the late 1970s after the Communist Party expressed disapproval of Kundera’s criticism in his novels of the communist regime that ruled over Czechoslovakia at the time. Since 1974, Kundera lives in France, where he gained French citizenship in 1981.
After the fall of communism in 1989, Kundera visited his home country several times. In 1995, President Václav Havel awarded him the Medal for Merit.
At last year’s meeting in Paris, Prime Minister Andrej Babiš presented Kundera an offer to restore his Czech citizenship.
Milan Kundera is one of the most translated writers in the world, with more than 3,000 translations into various world languages.
Among his best-known works are the Unbearable Lightness of Being, the Book of Laughter and Oblivion, Immortality, and the Prank. In recent decades, Kudendera has written his novels in French.
