Milan Kundera, a well-known Czech novelist whose works include The Anniversary Light of Bearing, has regained Czech citizenship 40 years after being withdrawn under the country's socialist rule.
The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, as it was known at the time, withdrew citizenship from Kundera after he published The 1979 Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Laughter and Forgetting), a novel featuring Czechoslovak citizens opposed to the government.
Kundera, who lives in Paris and became a French citizen, currently holds both nationalities.
Czech Ambassador to France Peter Drulak told the Bravo newspaper that Kundera had handed over citizenship documents last Thursday at the home of the famous novelist.
He noted that Kundera was happy to have his citizenship again, adding that Kundera “has a very strong sense of Czech identity.”
Kundera is now 90, and his relationship with the Czech Republic remains precarious, and many of his novels have not yet appeared in his native language.