The Japan Times - Novelist Kundera and wife buried in Czech home city

Kundera, known for "The Joke" and "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", died in his Paris flat in July 2023, aged 94.

His wife Vera kept an urn with his ashes at home until her death in September 2024.

French publisher Antoine Gallimard brought the urns with the Kunderas' ashes to Brno in January 2025 as Kundera wanted to be buried there.

"The burial was held in a narrow circle of family members, friends, French embassy staff and representatives of Brno, a city of which Kundera was an honorary citizen," the Brno city hall said on its website.

The Kunderas were buried in Brno's central cemetery under a "levitating" white ledger stone by Austrian architect Johannes Paar, giving the impression that it is floating in the air above the grave.

Paar won an architectonic contest in 2025 in which 39 designs were assessed.

His design "respects the wish of the Kunderas for a simple and modest tomb corresponding to Kundera's literary style", the city hall added.

Kundera was a French citizen since 1981 following the couple's emigration from Communist-ruled Czechoslovakia in 1975.

He was known for dark, provocative novels dealing with the human condition and sprinkled with satire reflecting his experience of being stripped of his Czech nationality for dissent.

He was frequently touted as a favourite to win the Nobel Prize for literature, but never did.

K.Tanaka--JT