1. Introduction
Milan Kundera was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1929. Kundera published his first novel, The Joke, which describes life under Communism with harsh satire. The Joke was published to international acclaim. In the 1970s, due to a change in the regime's policies, dissident intellectuals were forced to leave Czechoslovakia. Kundera left his native country in 1975 and settled in Paris, where Kundera teaches and writes today. New attention came to Milan Kundera after the fall of Communism; even after the instatement of a new regime, Kundera declined to go on proposed official visits to his native land, and chose not to revoke immediately the ban he had imposed on publication of his novels in Czechoslovakia. Plans were under way in 1998 for the eventual Czech publication of all of Kundera's novels.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being opens with a philosophical discussion of lightness versus heaviness.