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

By Karen Von Kunes

Book Overview

In Milan Kundera's Fiction: A Critical Approach to Existential Betrayals, Karen von Kunes traces Kundera's 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 Miroslav Dvor cek to the police, resulting in Dvor cek's immediate arrest and sentencing to hard labor. von Kunes debunks this shocking charge in a systematic way and argues that Kundera reported a suitcase, not a man. She ties Kundera's 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1498510825
• ISBN13: 9781498510820
• Release Date: March 2022
• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.1"