The Czech writer Milan Kundera can now restore his Czech citizenship decades after the Czechoslovakia’s communist regime removed it, said the Czech Prime Minister Andrei Babis. Kundera was deprived of citizenship in the 1970s because of his support for the events of the Prague Spring, which was suppressed by the Soviet Union at the time.
Following the ban of his books in his home country for many years and the constant infringement of his privacy by the Communist secret police, Kundera was forced to move and live in France since 1975, before he and his wife were formally stripped of their Czech citizenship in 1979.
Ranked second to Franz Kafka, Kundera is regarded as the most famous Czech novelist of the 20th century with his many novels that have made him one of the most prominent Nobel Prize candidates for decades. He was able to visit his home country for the first time in 1996, followed by several, although short-lived-and-transient, visits.