Prague: A Disappearing Poem | Milan Kundera | Granta Magazine

Prague: A Disappearing Poem

Milan Kundera

Translated by Edmund White

‘Prague, this dramatic and suffering centre of Western destiny, is gradually fading away into the mists of Eastern Europe, to which it has never really belonged.’

Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera was born in Czechoslovakia in 1929 and died in 2023 in France. His novels include The Joke, The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Immortality. ‘The Great Return’, published in Granta 78, is taken from his novel Ignorance.

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Translated by Edmund White

Edmund White’s books include a trio of autobiographical novels, A Boy’s Own Story, The Beautiful Room Is Empty and The Farewell Symphony, as well as biographies of Jean Genet, Marcel Proust and Arthur Rimbaud. He first appeared in Granta as a translator of Milan Kundera from the French, and is now a contributing editor to the magazine. In 2018, he received the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Career Achievement in American Fiction.

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