French · 1929–2023
Czech-born French novelist who fused fiction with philosophical essay. Born in Brno, trained as a musician, he joined the Communist Party, was expelled twice, and left Czechoslovakia after the 1968 invasion. The Joke, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting made him internationally famous—novels where ideas about memory, politics, and kitsch interrupt and illuminate plots. He settled in Paris, became a French citizen, and in later years wrote directly in French. His influence on the novel as a thinking form is vast.