A woman reads "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" in Prague
© AFP Michal Cizek

PRAGUE (AFP) - "Since the end of October, we have been selling around a hundred copies a day. Before, we offered the book in English, but Czech is Czech," said Jiri Bilek, manager of the "Luxor Book Palace" store in central Prague.

The shelves of many large book stores in the city have been cleared of Kundera's masterpiece within three weeks of its Czech release. Luxor has dispatched a letter to the publisher, Atlantis, warning of "the anger of its clients" faced with the insufficient number of copies.

The reason for the delayed literary stampede is simple: before the Atlantis edition, Czechs had very restricted access to a book which, in spite of its international success, had never been printed in their country.

The only Czech version was published in 1985 in Toronto, Canada, by the publishing house, "Sixty-Eight Publishers," run by two emigre writers, Josef Skvorecky and Zdena Salivarova.

Their version followed hard on the heels of the initial publication in French of Kundera's novel. The writer went into self-imposed exile in France in 1975.

For the latest edition, Kundera has reworked the original text.

"It was necessary to reconstruct the manuscript, partially lost, then compare it with the Skvorecky edition and above all with the French translation in which I introduced many small changes over 20 years," he explained in the postscript.

The author is famous for his meticulous attention to the meaning of his words and the accuracy of their translation.

Born in the Czech Republic's second city, Brno, in 1929, Kundera has only returned sporadically, and always incognito, to his homeland since his departure for France.

His international success has inspired an ambivalent mixture of admiration and spite.

Banned by the Communist regime, the author described by the Czech weekly "Tyden" as an "unbearable agitator" now writes in French and his books, which he translates himself into Czech, are drip fed to readers.

Seventeen years after the Velvet Revolution which toppled the Communist regime, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" becomes only the fourth of Kundera's novels to be published in Czech, following in the wake of "The Joke," "The Farewell Waltz," and "Immortality."

A pirate translation of "Identity" appeared on the Internet in June, but patient Czech fans are still waiting for "Slowness" and, especially, "Ignorance" which evokes the complex relations between those who opted for exile and those who chose to stick it out under Communist rule.

The long wait has given rise to a certain frustration which has led some of Kundera's compatriots to suspect him of treating them with contempt, as the Czech weekly "Respekt" recently underlined.

"If "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" had been published during the great post-1989 boom, he could have sold five times as many," Vladimir Sebek, who runs a small bookshop in the centre of Prague, explained.

"The delay (in publishing) is incomprehensible and gave rise to rumours ... that can generally be put down to personal animosity," he added.

Already translated into many languages, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" tells the story of the short-lived wind of change which transformed the rigid Czechoslovak Communist system during the Prague Spring of 1968 through the eyes of a young couple.

Tomas and Tereza opt for exile in Switzerland following the arrival of the Soviet tanks in August 1968 which marked Moscow's clampdown on the so-called experiment in "Communism with a human face."

Afterwards, they choose to return to their homeland, already marked by a mixture of resignation and disappointment.

©AFP