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

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 Dvořáček to the police, resulting in Dvořáček'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.

Author: Karen Von Kunes
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 03/04/2022
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.85lbs
ISBN13: 9781498510820
ISBN10: 1498510825
BISAC Categories:
- Philosophy | Ethics & Moral Philosophy
- Psychology | Personality
- Literary Criticism | Modern | 20th Century

About the Author
Karen von Kunes is faculty member at Yale University.