The ashes of Milan Kundera and his wife were repatriated to the Czech Republic

They died in 2023 and 2024 respectively in France, where they had lived since their exile from Czechoslovakia. In accordance with the wishes of French-Czech writer Milan Kundera and his wife Vera, their ashes were repatriated to Brno, the writer’s hometown, the Moravian Library reported on Monday (January 20). “Vera and Milan Kundera, who had lived in France since 1975, symbolically returned to Brno”wrote the library of this town located in the southeast of the Czech Republic in a press release.

Known in particular for his novels The Joke (1967) or The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Milan Kundera died on July 11, 2023, at the age of 94, in his Parisian apartment. He wanted to be buried in his hometown. Vera Kundera kept the urn containing his ashes at her home until she died last September.

Publisher Antoine Gallimard and the Czech Ambassador to France, Michel Fleischmann, brought the two ballot boxes to Brno last week. “Both urns are now in Brno and will be placed in the grave when it is ready”said Tomas Kubicek, the director of the library.

Brno City Hall launched an architectural competition to design the writer’s tomb last year, and plans to complete the work in mid-2025.

The couple fled communist Czechoslovakia in 1975, and Milan Kundera acquired French nationality in 1981. Born in Brno in 1929, he was one of the great authors of 20th century European literature.^e century. His novels question the human condition, the evolution of identity, the meaning of freedom, the coincidences of existence and even the possibility of love.