A Kidnapped West or Culture Bows Out | Milan Kundera | Granta Magazine

A Kidnapped West or Culture Bows Out

Milan Kundera

Translated by Edmund White

‘But since Europe itself is in the process of losing its own cultural identity, it perceives in Central Europe nothing but a political regime; put another way, it sees in Central Europe only Eastern Europe.’

Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera was born in Czechoslovakia in 1929. 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. His most recent work is The Festival of Insignificance was published by Faber in 2014. He lives in France.

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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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