(b.1960) is a literary theorist and critic, currently at the Faculty of Arts at Charles University in Prague. He publishes in a number of literary journals. Besides others, he is an author of a book of essays on the present state of contemporary fiction, The Story, Is It Dead? (Host, Brno 2003).
Poets abound in Brno’s literary history, but a prose monument to the Moravian capital has yet to be written. Two neglected stories by native son Milan Kundera, set in post-war Czechoslovakia, fill the gap, writes Jirí Trávnícek.
First published in Czech in 1985 by the Toronto-based ’68 Publishers, illicitly imported copies of Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being first circulated on a strictly hand-to-hand basis. Now, when it is freely available on the shelves of bookshops, what does it mean to the Czech reader? Twenty-two years later, literary critic Jiri Travnicek discovers a newfound appreciation for Kundera’s narration, characterization, and above all wisdom.
