Milan Kundera in China

Among the foreign writers introduced to China in the new era, Milan Kundera might be considered as one of the most distinguished figures. Born in Czechoslovakia, a young and eventful Central European country (now partitioned into the Czech Republic and Slovakia), Kundera is a writer of many cultural identities. He was known as a worker, a jazz musician and a professor. He was also a Communist and an influential figure in the Czechoslovakian New Wave Cinema, a participant in the 1968 Prague Spring, a victim of the Soviet’s invasion of Czechoslovakia and an exile after 1975. He enjoyed a prestigious fame in China, and the Kundera Heat in China in the 1980s spread his influence to all levels of Chinese cultural circles, from general readers to writers and literary critics. His fame in China can be matched by only a few literary icons like William Faulkner, García Márquez, Borges and Yasunari Kawabata.