Please join us for the first in a series of events exploring the work of Milan Kundera (1929-2023), the Czech writer whose books became an international phenomenon. During the Soviet domination of Czechoslovakia, Kundera reminded the world of his native country’s central place in European culture. His formative influences included the composer Leoš Janáček and that modern myth-maker, Franz Kafka. Kundera was also drawn to the imagination of France, where he settled in 1975. The cultural form that preoccupied Kundera was the novel. He leaned into its skepticism and comedy to contemplate societies distorted by ideology and vacuousness.
At this opening event, Robert Cremins and Dan Price from the Honors College at the University of Houston will talk about Kundera’s art and philosophy. We hope this discussion will whet your appetite for our Milan Kundera book club, which in subsequent months will meet to consider three of his major novels: The Joke, one of the seeds of the Prague Spring; The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a best-seller that became a popular film; and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, which back in late 1980 The New York Times called “the most original book of the season.”
time and location
Thursday, January 25, 2024, at 7:00 PM
Czech Center Museum Houston
4920 San Jacinto St
Houston, Texas, 77004
Tickets
Admission is Free.
partner
Robert Cremins is a Senior Lecturer in the Honors College at the University of Houston, where he also directs Creative Work: A Pre-Professional Program. He is the author of the novels A Sort of Homecoming and Send in the Devils. His short fiction has appeared in Critical Quarterly, The Dublin Review, and been broadcast on BBC Radio.
Dan Price has taught at the University of Houston's Honors College since 2000. He has a PhD in Philosophy, specializing in French and German Aesthetics and Ethics. After several books on the intersection of ethics, community, and art, he has spent the last decade working toward practical applications of philosophy. He directs both the Community Health Worker Initiative and the Data & Society Program at the Honors College. They collect and analyze data from front-line health workers in disadvantaged communities around the Houston area, creating innovative programs for undergraduates to work side by side with community members to address a wide range of health problems.