Milan Kundera's Fiction: A Critical Approach to Existential Betrayals

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Milan Kundera is one of the few Czech writers with worldwide readership. Often set within a political context, his novels have appealed to readers for their clarity and originality, intellectual flair, philosophical angles, and mythological metaphors. In Milan Kunderas Fiction: A Critical Approach to Existential Betrayals, Karen von Kunes traces Kunderas literary aspirations to a single episode in Czechoslovakia in the Stalinist era. This moment attracted international attention when a 1950 police report was released in 2008. Reporters rushed to judgment, accusing Kundera of denouncing a young man, Miroslav Dvoek, to the police, resulting in Dvoeks immediate arrest and sentencing to hard labor. von Kunes debunks this shocking charge in a systematic and thorough fashion. She argues that Kundera reported a suitcase, not a man. Von Kunes further contends that two sentences in the report provide significant insight into Kunderas novels and plays. She ties his dominant themes of sex, betrayal, and political denouncement to the suitcase, a fatal instrument that can lead to paradoxes and unforeseen and catastrophic coincidences for his characters.

Reviews

"Karen von Kunes has been following Kundera's work for years, and her judgment and analyses are always very precise in capturing the essence of the author's endeavor. Hers is the evolving attempt, very much in sync with Kundera's own changing themes and motifs. Kundera is responding to a new situation in the changing world and the sometimes uncomfortable changes in his fiction might be a challenge to some readers. Von Kunes makes sense of this challenging author in persuasive and clear interpretation of some of his most difficult works. -- Peter Petro, The University of British Columbia
"Milan Kundera's Fiction is a topical, all-encompassing and very stimulating analysis of Milan Kunderas literary oeuvre. The author starts out by examining an incident from March 1950 when a CIA agent was arrested in Prague and Kundera may have been entangled in this event. A major role was played by coincidences and by a mysterious suitcase - hence von Kunes argues that the motif of suitcase is the fatal 'instrument' which always leads to catastrophic developments in Kundera's work. -- Jan ulk, University of Glasgow
Karen von Kunes explores the ever-changing identity of Milan Kundera from his student days in Czechoslovakia to his authorial career in France, uncovering interwoven life struggles in the fiction of an inquisitive, analytical, and erudite mind. The case of a real-life valise that caught young Kunderas attention on March 14, 1950 and escalated into a political and human drama of betrayal and suffering reappears throughout his fiction. Digression, confusion, paradox, political plight, irrational behavior, secret police, and prison contribute to this comprehensive inquiry into Kunderas profoundly human stories of laughter and forgetting. -- Kenneth David Jackson, Yale University
Karen von Kunesoffers a uniquely creative analysis of Milan Kundera's life and art via the image of a suitcase. Once opened, it offers a reading and understanding of fictional characters, the author himself, andthe political realities of the twentieth century.Milan Kundera's Fiction: A Critical Approach to Existential Betrayals reads like a detective story, one that is suspenseful and thought provoking well beyond its pages. -- Hana Pichova, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill

Author Bio

Karen von Kunes is lecturer at Yale University.