was a Czech-French writer. He lived in France from 1975 and wrote in French from the late 1980s. During his lifetime, he became the world's most successful and translated author of Czech origin. He died on July 11, 2023 in Paris.

He studied philosophy and musicology. He also graduated from the Film Faculty of AMU, where he later lectured on world literature. He was expelled from the Communist Party for "anti-party activity", after 1956 his membership was restored and he was involved in the reform movement. He performed at the IV. convention of the Union of Writers, generally considered to be the beginning of the Prague Spring. During the normalization period, he lived as a dissident and got the opportunity to emigrate to France, where he was offered an academic position.

After 1989, he rarely returned to the Czech Republic and significantly limited the publication of his works in Czech. His best-known novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, was published in the Czech Republic only in 2006. After a long negotiation, the Artforum publishing house got approval for the Slovak publication of some of his French texts. In 2023, the Artforum publishing house publishes (already after the author's death) his third book in Slovak - Identity.

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