Culture ministry confirms national literature prize for Kundera

The culture ministry has confirmed that Czech-born writer Milan Kundera will be awarded the Czech Republic's national prize for literature. The novelist will be given the prize for the Czech-language edition of "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" published last year. The novel was originally written in 1982 and was first published in Czech by the Toronto-based "68 Publishers". Mr Kundera, 78, has lived in France for years and has long shunned the media spotlight; only a few of the author's books have been published in his homeland since the collapse of communism, the last in Czech being "Immortality" in 1990.

Author: Jan Velinger