Milan Kundera was born on April 1, 1929, in Brno, in what is now the Czech Republic, the son of Milada Janosikova and Ludvik Kundera. His father, a noted concert pianist and and musicologist, taught him piano, and he considered a career in music before his interests shifted to literature, particularly French.
“From an early age ,” he told an interviewer for the literary journal Salmagundi in 1987, “I read Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, Breton, Cocteau, Bataille, Ionesco, and admired French surrealism.” - Daniel Lewis, The New York Times, Thursday, July 2023 on MILAN KUNDERA, 1929 - 2023