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of the Mountain (1950), which won the literary
prize of the Japanese Academy. The story, which
catalogs the rambling thoughts of an aging patri-
arch, is distinctive for its stream-of-consciousness
narrative.
Kawabata was a member of the literary move-
ment called Shinkankakuha (Neo-Perceptionists).
The movement attempted to find methods of
bringing individual senses to life, chiefly through
stream-of-consciousness narrative. Typically, his
stories lack a traditional plot structure but excel in
lyrical quality. His unique narrative style garnered
attention internationally, and in 1968 Kawabata
was the first Japanese writer to receive a Nobel
Prize in literature.
Other Works by Kawabata Yasunari
Beauty and Sadness. Translated by Howard Hibbett.
New York: Knopf, 1975.
The House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories.
Translated by Edward Seidensticker. Tokyo: Ko-
dansha International, 1969.
A Work about Kawabata Yasunari
Gessel, Van C. Three Modern Novelists: So¯seki,
Tanizaki, Kawabata. Tokyo: Kodansha Interna-
tional, 1993.
Kazantzakis, Nikos (1883–1957) poet,
philosopher, novelist
Nikos Kazantzakis was born in Iráklion, Crete, and
is considered one of the most important 20th-cen-
tury Greek philosophers. He graduated from
Athens Law School in 1906 and fought as a volun-
teer for the Greek army during the Balkan wars.
After the wars ended, he traveled to Spain, Egypt,
China, Japan, and Russia, publishing travelogues of
his journeys.
Kazantzakis is much better known as a philoso-
pher than as a writer. His work was influenced by
the writings of NIETZSCHE, elements of marxism,
and the basic philosophical beliefs of Christianity
and Buddhism. He attempted to combine and har-
monize these different ideas in his book Askitiki
(1927), which is considered the basis of his own
philosophy. His epic poem Odyssey: A Modern Se-
quel (1938) is also among his well-known earlier
works. It picks up Ulysses’ tale where Homer left
off and brings it to a more solid conclusion.
It was in the later years of his life, however, that
Kazantzakis became famous for his novels, includ-
ing Zorba the Greek (1946) and The Last Tempta-
tion of Christ (1955). Both of these works have
since been made into films. The controversial na-
ture of The Last Temptation of Christ, in which
Jesus must face the greatest temptation of all, led to
the Roman Catholic Church’s banning of the book
and to Kazantzakis’s excommunication from the
Greek Orthodox Church in 1955. The film version,
produced in 1988, also caused much protest from
conservative Christian organizations.
In 1956, Kazantzakis was awarded the Interna-
tional Peace Award. He died one year later in Ger-
many, the same year that the first of his novels to
be made into a film, He Who Must Die (1957) was
presented at the Cannes Film Festival.
Other Works by Nikos Kazantzakis
At the Palaces of Knossos: A Novel. Translated by
Themi and Theodora Vasils. Athens: Ohio
University Press, 1988.
Buddha. Translated By Kimon Friar and Athena Dal-
lis-Damis. San Diego, Calif.: Avant Books, 1983.
Works about Nikos Kazantzakis
Bien, Peter. Nikos Kazantzakis, Novelist. Bristol: Bris-
tol Classical Press, 1989.
Dombrowski, Daniel. Kazantzakis and God. Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1997.
Kemal, Yas¸ar (1923– ) novelist, poet
Ya s¸ar Kemal was born in Hemite, a hamlet in the
province of Adana in southern Turkey. When
Kemal was five, his father was murdered while
praying in the mosque. Kemal found solace in his
love of music and poetry. When he turned nine,
he attended a school in the neighboring village.
He completed his primary education in Kadirli
238 Kazantzakis, Nikos
where his family resettled, becoming the first vil-
lager from Hemite to complete his primary educa-
tion.
Kemal wrote his first story in 1947 and worked
as a public letter writer for the next three years. In
1950, he moved to Istanbul, where he found a job
as a reporter for the daily newspaper Cumhuriyet
(Republic). Kemal’s unique style of writing won
him not only national but also international recog-
nition. He was a fervent activist for human rights
in Turkey, and his works and activities enhanced
his fame as a spellbinding storyteller.
Kemal’s enchantment with the Anatolian tradi-
tion of folk minstrels features prominently in his
writings such as Salman the Solitary (translated
1998), in which the traveling bard assumes the nar-
rator’s role. Kemal’s love of music and creativity
allow him to enhance his talent as an animated and
powerful storyteller. He writes with energy and de-
votion, drawing on the rich tradition of his Turk-
ish heritage and the literary tradition of Anatolia.
His works, though heavily imbued by his strong
leftist political views, still preserve a certain idyllic
quality, which bespeaks of optimism and roman-
ticism.
In an interesting way, Kemal represents the ro-
mantic bard of the Anatolian past who writes and
sings of social injustice. He has found balance be-
tween his appropriation of the genre of traditional
literature and his concern with modern issues. His
best-known novel is the epic Memed, My Hawk
(1955), which won the Varlik Prize 1996 for Best
Novel. Kemal has been short-listed for the Nobel
Prize in literature many times, and his collection of
articles won the annual Journalists’ Association
Prize.
Other Works by Yas¸ar Kemal
Anatolian Tales. Translated from the Turkish by
Thilda Kemal. New York: Mead, 1969.
Iron Earth, Copper Sky. Translated from the Turkish
by Thilda Kemal. London: Collins and Harvill
Press, 1974.
Seagull. Translated from the Turkish by Thilda Kemal.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1981.
A Work about Yas¸ar Kemal
Bosquet, Alain. Ya s¸ar Kemal on His Life and Art: Yas¸ar
Kemal with Alain Bosquet. Translated from the
French by Eugene Hibert and Barry Tharaud. Al-
bany, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1990.
Keneally, Thomas (1935– ) novelist,
playwright
Thomas Keneally was born at Kempsey on the
north coast of New South Wales, Australia. His fa-
ther was a postman. He attended a Christian
Brothers’ school for his primary and high school
education, and, at 17, he began to study for the
Catholic priesthood. He abandoned this vocation
in 1960 before his official ordination. Keneally
taught for two years at the University of New Eng-
land at Armidale before becoming a full-time
writer. He was one of the few Australians who
could rely on his writing to support himself and
his family. Keneally has received three Common-
wealth Literary Fund Awards, and his books have
won two Miles Franklin Awards. He was awarded
the Order of Australia in 1983 for his contributions
to Australian literature. Keneally now lives in New
York and Sydney.
Keneally’s writing appeals to both Australian
and international audiences because it deals with
human issues that transcend all geographical and
social boundaries. Using a mixture of humor and
tragic irony, Keneally is able to capture the con-
stant struggle of society to come to terms with its
actions, its relationships with others, and its un-
certainty. Keneally’s past clearly influences his
works. His first novel, The Place at Whitton (1964),
is a mystery tale set in a Catholic seminary, while
Blood Red, Sister Rose (1974) involves a female
heroine character who resembles Joan of Arc.
These two novels highlight the importance influ-
ence of the Catholic vocation as a phase in his past.
One of the major subjects represented in Ke-
neally’s works is his concern with history and its
lessons. Using historical materials, he is able to ex-
amine historical events and their impact through
the perspectives of his central characters in novels
Keneally, Thomas 239
such as Schindler’s Ark (1982) and Bring Larks and
Heroes (1967). Schindler’s Ark tells the true story
of Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist who
saved thousands of Jews from death during the
Holocaust. This book was adapted and made into
a movie, Schindler’s List, in 1993. Bring Larks and
Heroes narrates the story of Australians who
fought in Vietnam during World War II.
Keneally’s earlier novels tend to have a predom-
inantly Australian setting. Books such as The Fear
(1965) and The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1972)
are set in Australia. In The Fear, Keneally examines
the experiences of a young boy growing up during
World War II. The fears of war reaching Australian
shores loom heavy in the imaginative mind of the
boy as he begins to conjure imaginary visions of
war atrocities and prisoner-of-war camps. The
Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, however, is a study of
a history of interracial relations between the Abo-
rigines and the Europeans. His later novels, begin-
ning with Blood Red, Sister Rose, are set in locations
including France, England, Yugoslavia, and the
United States.
Keneally’s novels cover a wide range of genres
from fables to macabre murders and mysteries. His
versatility can be observed in his writings from
concise and didactic parables to ornately elaborate
narratives. In all Keneally’s novels, he is concerned
with the connection between the past and the pres-
ent. His motivation to write stems from his curios-
ity regarding the irony that human beings often
find themselves in conflict with the conventions
and values of the systems of authority that they
help create. For instance, Schindler in Schindler’s
Ark tries to do the humane thing by assisting many
Jews to escape even though the fear of being dis-
covered by the fanatical Nazi government hovers
constantly over his head.
Keneally’s heroes and heroines act with in-
tegrity and honor despite their individual flaws.
They are tragic figures trapped between the de-
mands of unsympathetic institutions of authority
and their own personal desires. In their attempts to
do the right thing, they often flounder either in the
seas of their guilt or under the destructive claws of
the authority. Examples of these can be found in
two of Keneally’s characters, Ramsey and Mait-
land. Ramsey, in The Survivor (1969), finds himself
caught in a vicious abyss of guilt and remorse for
40 years after he deserted his close friend and com-
panion during an Antarctic expedition. Maitland,
a priest–teacher in Three Cheers for the Paraclete
(1968), finds himself the subject of a series of reli-
gious hymns poking fun at the absurdity of reli-
gious rules. The tragic nature of the characters’
experiences is partially alleviated by Keneally’s in-
jections of humor into the harsh reality of their
experiences. The message that Keneally clearly
sends across to his readers is the recognition that in
spite of their poignant experiences, these heroic
characters are active shapers of their own worlds.
This is perhaps a main reason that Keneally’s nov-
els are so appealing to readers all over the world:
Readers are able to empathize with Keneally’s pro-
tagonists. The human condition is a complex web,
and people are victims as well as active participants
in their destinies.
Keneally also writes in other genres such as
drama, children’s stories, nonfiction, and film
scripts. His plays include Halloran’s Little Boat
(1968), which is an adaptation of his book Bring
Larks and Heroes, and Bullie’s House (1981), which
examines early interactions between Australian
Aborigines and the European settlers. In Bullie’s
House, the Aborigines show the white settlers their
precious totems hoping that the latter would in re-
turn share their knowledge and technology, which
the whites never quite do on equal terms. Ke-
neally’s greatest contribution lies in his ability to
capture in essence and intensity the dramatic clash
of two cultures, which constitutes an important
theme in world literature.
Other Works by Thomas Keneally
The Great Shame: and the Triumph of the Irish in the
English-speaking World. New York: Nan A. Talese,
1999.
The Playmaker. London: Sceptre, 1988.
A Season in Purgatory. New York: Harcourt Brace Jo-
vanovich, 1977.
240 Keneally, Thomas
Three Cheers for the Paraclete. New York: Viking,
1969.
Towards Asmara. London: Hodder and Staughton,
1989.
Victim of the Aurora. New York: Harcourt Brace Jo-
vanovich, 1978.
Works about Thomas Keneally
Beston, John. “Novelist’s Vital Professionalism,”
Hemisphere 17, no. 10 (1973): 23–26.
Breitinger, Eckhard. “Thomas Keneally’s Historical
Novels,” Commonwealth News (Aarhus) 10 (1976):
16–20.
Kincaid, Jamaica (Elaine Potter
Richardson)
(1949– ) novelist, short-story
writer
Jamaica Kincaid was born in St. John’s, Antigua,
and named Elaine Potter Richardson by her
mother, Annie Richardson. Shortly after Kincaid’s
birth, Annie married David Drew, a carpenter and
cabinetmaker, after whom Kincaid models her fic-
tional fathers, not her biological father, Roderick
Potter. Annie Richardson taught her daughter how
to read and sent her to the Moravian school.
Shortly after her 17th birthday, Kincaid traveled to
the United States to work and study.
Elaine Potter Richardson officially changed her
name to Jamaica Kincaid in 1973, partially to
heighten her anonymity as a writer. In 1976, she
started to work as a staff writer for The New Yorker,
after George W. Trow, the New Yorker’s “Talk of the
Town” editor, introduced Kincaid to the maga-
zine’s editor, William Shawn. Before long, Kincaid
began to write the “Talk of the Town” column and
by 1992 was using the metaphor of gardening to
write about the effects of colonialism.
Critics have praised Kincaid’s lyrical originality,
her characterization, and the modernist narrative
techniques in her depiction of Caribbean life, in-
cluding colonialism, separation, and mother-child
relationships. Kincaid voiced a lack of interest in
First World approval, assuming a self-exiled literary
position (in a 1990 interview with Donna Perry).
Ironically enough, critical attention and acclaim
from First World critics—especially for her short-
story collection, At the Bottom of the River (1983),
and her novels, Annie John (1985) and Lucy
(1990)—steadily increased. To quote R. B. Hughes in
Empire and Domestic Space in the Fiction of Jamaica
Kincaid, “Kincaid’s novels illustrate alternative, con-
ceptual, emancipatory spaces within idealised colo-
nial territory. Her doing so depends upon her ‘. . .
displacing the discursive structures of the (colonial)
master subject,’ and depends too ‘...on a sense of
possibilities and self-representation beyond the ter-
ritory defined by the dominant [culture].’”
Other Works by Jamaica Kincaid
Annie, Gwen, Lilly, Pam and Tulip. New York: Whit-
ney Museum of Modern Art, 1986.
Autobiography of My Mother. New York: Farrar, Straus
& Giroux, 1995.
A Small Place. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
1988.
Works about Jamaica Kincaid
Covi, Giovanna. Jamaica Kincaid and the Resistance to
Canons. In Carole Boyce Davies and Elaine Savory
Fido, eds., Out of the Kumbla: Caribbean Women
and Literature. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press,
1990: 345–354.
Paravisini-Gebert, Lizabeth. Jamaica Kincaid: A Crit-
ical Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood,
Press, 1999.
Kirsch, Sarah (Ingrid Bernstein)
(1935– ) poet, short-story writer
Sarah Kirsch was born in Limlingerode, a village in
the Harz Mountains. Her father worked in
telecommunications for the East German govern-
ment. Kirsch became a socialist at a young age. She
earned a diploma in biology from the University of
Halle and attended the Johannes R. Becher Insti-
tute for Literature in Leipzig from 1963 to 1965.
Participating in the East German effort to build
solidarity between workers and writers, Kirsch
worked in factories and collective farms during the
Kirsch, Sarah 241
1960s. She married the writer Rainer Kirsch in
1958.
Kirsch’s first publication was a radio play for
children that she cowrote with her husband in
1963. They also collaborated on her first poetry
collection, Gesprach mit dem Saurier (Conversation
with a Dinosaur, 1965), a volume of children’s
poems with a political edge. Her poems in Lan-
daufenthalt (A Stay in the Country, 1967) combine
descriptions of nature with political commentary.
In the late 1960s, Kirsch defended the value of lyric
poetry in the socialist state. Although her stand
drew government criticism, the debate started a
“lyric boom” among poets. In 1976, she protested
when East Germany revoked the citizenship of the
singer Wolf Biermann. As a result, she lost her
membership in the Communist Party and moved
to West Berlin.
Kirsch is known for her unique style that com-
bines musicality and facility of language. She used
intense nature images to describe human experi-
ences and to bridge the gap between love poetry
and the poetry of social production. She was espe-
cially concerned about the role of women in mod-
ern society in both private and public realms.
Kirsch’s influences include Bettina von ARNIM and
the Russian poet Anna AKHMATOVA. Despite her
political difficulties, Kirsch won numerous awards
for her poetry and short-story collections in the
1970s and 1980s, including the Friedrich Hölder-
lin Prize.
Another Work by Sarah Kirsch
The Panther Woman: Five Tales from the Cassette
Recorder. Translated by Marion Faber. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1989.
A Work about Sarah Kirsch
Hopwood, Mererid, and David Basker, eds. Sarah
Kirsch. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1997.
Ki
v
s, Danilo (1935–1989) novelist, poet
Danilo Ki
v
s was born in Subotica, on the border of
Yugoslavia and Hungary. His father, a Hungarian
Jew, died in Auschwitz. Most of his family was
killed during World War II except his mother, a
Christian from Montenegro. Raised in Hungary
and Montenegro, Ki
v
s studied literature at the Uni-
versity of Belgrade and eventually worked as a
teacher in France.
Ki
v
s’s work was greatly influenced by the loss of
his family. His novels Garden, Ashes (1965) and
Hourglass (1972) are monuments to his father’s life
and death. A Tomb for Boris Davidovic (1976) is a
collection of stories about victims of Communist
terror set in a politically oppressed Eastern Europe.
In the title story of this collection, Boris repeat-
edly flees from prison and changes his name, only
to be recaptured. The frequency of this pattern is
both comic and tragic. This and the rest of the sto-
ries in the volume are short biographical sketches
of a victim as hero, fighting against history and a
pervasive sense of doom. The characters range
from idealistic to opportunistic, from sadistic to
compassionate, and the stories themselves from
the absurd to the horrific.
Another of Ki
v
s’s works, based largely on per-
sonal narrative, is Early Sorrows (1969), a collec-
tion of stories about the often tragic childhood
experiences of a Jewish boy in a small Serbian town
near the Hungarian border during World War II.
Ki
v
s illustrates the dramatic change in the boy’s life
from peaceful serenity to horror and brutality after
soldiers enter his village.
Ki
v
s’s work gained large international audiences
primarily because noted writer Susan Sontag in-
troduced Ki
v
s to English-speaking readers. He has
also been compared with Jorge Luis BORGES,to
whom he explicitly admitted a debt, once indicat-
ing that the history of the short story can be di-
vided into two distinct eras: before Borges and
after Borges.
Other Works by Danilo Ki
v
s
The Encyclopedia of the Dead. Translated by Michael
Henry Heim. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
1989.
Hourglass. Translated by Ralph Manheim. Evanston,
Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1997.
242 Ki
v
s, Danilo
A Work about Danilo Ki
v
s
Birnbaum, M. D., and R. Trager-Verchovsky, eds. His-
tory, Another Text. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1988.
Klausner, Amos
See OZ
, AMOS.
Kogawa, Joy (1935– ) poet, novelist
Joy Kogawa was born in Vancouver. As a second-
generation Japanese-Canadian, or nisei, her work,
including poetry, fiction, children’s literature, and
nonfiction, often reflects the perspectives of Japan-
ese-Canadians. Kogawa and her family were evac-
uated to Slocan, British Columbia, and later to
Coaldale, Alberta, during World War II. Kogawa
received her education at the University of Alberta
and taught elementary school in Coaldale. She also
studied at the University of Toronto and at both
the Anglican Women’s Training College and the
University of Saskatchewan. She married in 1957,
had two children, and divorced in 1968.
Joy Kogawa has published several collections of
poetry, essays, children’s literature, and novels.
Among her more notable works are the novels
Obasan (1981), which focuses on the lives of
Japanese-Canadians during World War II, and The
Rain Ascends (1995), about a Protestant clergyman
who abuses children. Kogawa has been active in
lobbying the Canadian federal government to ac-
knowledge and redress its decision to intern 20,000
Japanese Canadians during World War II.
Another Work by Joy Kogawa
Itsuka. Toronto: Viking, 1992.
Köhler, Barbara (1959– ) poet, essayist
Barbara Köhler was born in Burgstädt, Germany.
After passing the Arbitur (school-leaving exam),
she studied literature at the Johannes R. Becher
Institute in Leipzig. Her first collection of verse,
Deutsches Roulette (German Roulette, 1991), es-
tablished her as one of Germany’s most innova-
tive young poets. She followed up with a second
collection, Blue Box (1995), and published inter-
nationally in journals such as Poetry magazine.
She has also written for several newspapers. Köh-
ler’s several literary awards include the Leonce
and Lena Prize (1991), the Else Lasker-Schuler
Prize (1994), and the Clemens–Brentano Prize
(1996).
Köhler’s verse displays a restless yet precise pas-
sion, as seen in the poem “Self-portrait” (1991),
and also combines traditional and contemporary
forms. Her poems “Gedicht” (“Poem,” 1991), “In-
geborg Bachmann Stirbt in Rom” (“Ingeborg
Bachmann Dies in Rome,” 1991), and “IV” (1991)
reveal Köhler’s common themes of yearning,
mourning, and the memories of unhappy women,
respectively. Köhler’s writing shows an under-
standing of poetry’s potential in bringing out the
richness and fullness of language.
A Work about Barbara Köhler
Paul, Georgina, and Helmut Schmitz, eds. Entge-
genkommen: Dialogues with Barbara Köhler. At-
lanta: Rodopi, 2000.
Kokoschka, Oskar (1886–1980) painter,
poet, playwright
Oskar Kokoschka was born in Pochlarn, Austria,
to Gustav Kokoschka, a goldsmith, and Romana
Loidl, a great storyteller who inspired his love for
nature. Kokoschka graduated from state school,
but he dreamed of becoming an artist and
entered the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts,
where he studied from 1905 to 1909. The revolu-
tionary nature of his art was deemed scandalous
by some instructors and administrators, and he
was expelled after painting a particularly contro-
versial painting.
Kokoschka’s work often openly expressed sexual
themes and other controversial motifs; indeed, the
imagery in Kokoschka’s poetry often resembled the
strange and unusual images found in his graphic
works. In 1908, Kokoschka published his first book
Kokoschka, Oskar 243
of poetry, The Dreaming Youth. Along with the
poems, the book contained reproductions of
paintings that he specifically completed for the
book. Kokoschka’s early work was heavily influ-
enced by SYMBOLISM; however, he is often credited
with the foundation of EXPRESSIONISM.
The aim of the movement was to represent the
subjective psychological experience through liter-
ature and other forms of art. Murder, the Women’s
Hope (1916), a short play completed by
Kokoschka in 1907, became the basis for expres-
sionist drama. In the play, first performed in 1909,
the nameless Man confronts his impulsive sexual
drives and attempts to free himself from the phys-
ical dependence associated with bodily functions.
In a kind of crude sexual fantasy, the Man stran-
gles the nameless Woman and then slaughters her
female companions. The clearly demarcated an-
tagonism between the male and female, violence,
and sexual submission were persistent themes of
Kokoschka’s work. Orpheus and Eurydice (1923)
pursues similar themes and comments on the tur-
bulent relationship between Kokoschka and Alma
Mahler, the widow of the famous composer Gus-
tav Mahler (1860–1911). In many instances, how-
ever, his work was simply too overwhelming for
the sensibility of the general public, and it never
gained a wide appeal.
Kokoschka’s painting became renowned for its
surreal, dreamlike images, and it gained some pop-
ularity. He held an appointment as an art instruc-
tor between 1911 and the outbreak of World War I
in Vienna and Berlin. Kokoschka served in the cav-
alry of the Austrian army during World War I and
was wounded several times. After retiring from the
army, Kokoschka continued working extensively
on his paintings.
During the 1930s, Kokoschka’s works were
openly attacked by pro-Nazi newspapers in Austria
and Germany. Kokoschka left Austria for Czecho-
slovakia in 1931 and then emigrated to England
after the fall of Czechoslovakia to the Nazis. In
Nazi Germany, Kokoschka’s work was banned and
was ridiculed by the authorities as an example of
“degenerate art.” During this time of turmoil,
Kokoschka mostly wrote essays on art and expres-
sionist aesthetics.
After the end of World War II, Kokoschka re-
turned to Austria and worked as an art instructor
and theater designer. His gained international pop-
ularity by the 1950s, and his works were exhibited
throughout the world. In 1971, Kokoschka pub-
lished My Life, an autobiography in which he also
presents his views on art and culture and provides
engaging accounts of his personal relationships
with famous artists of the expressionist movement.
Oskar Kokoschka is mainly remembered today
for his paintings; however, his work in literature
laid the ground for the seminal expressionist
movement. His striking, often disturbing works
challenge our epistemological notions about art
and aesthetics. Today, Kokoschka’s visual art and
literary works are considered to be among the
masterpieces of the 20th century.
Other Works by Oskar Kokoschka
Oscar Kokoschka Drawings, 1906–1965. Miami: Uni-
versity of Miami Press, 1970.
Plays and Poems. Translated by Michael Mitchell.
New York: Ariadne Press, 2001.
Works about Oskar Kokoschka
Calvocaressi, Richard, and Katharina Schultz. Oskar
Kokoschka, 1886–1980. New York: Solomon R.
Guggenheim Foundation, 1986.
Whitford, Frank. Oskar Kokoschka: A Life. New York:
Atheneum, 1986.
Kostrowitsky, Wilhelm Apollinaris de
See APOLLINAIRE, GUILLAUME.
Kumagai Yumiko
See KURAHASHI YUMIKO.
Kundera, Milan (1929– ) novelist
Milan Kundera was born on April 1 in Brno,
Moravia. The son of a concert pianist and musi-
244 Kostrowitsky, Wilhelm Apollinaris de
cologist, Kundera studied music and was a jazz
musician in his youth. He soon turned to writing,
publishing his first volume of poetry, Clovek
Zahrada Sirá (Man: A Broad Garden) in 1953. This
work, as well as two later poetry collections—
Poslední Máj (The Last May, 1955) and Monology
(Monologues, 1957)—were condemned by
Czechoslovakian officials because of their ironic
tone and erotic imagery. Kundera has repeatedly
denied any political motivation behind his works.
Kundera was a Communist Party member
twice, from 1948 to 1950 and from 1956 to 1968.
Both times, he was expelled from the party for his
supposedly unorthodox or anticommunist opin-
ions. During this time, he also studied and taught
in the Film Faculty of Prague’s Academy of Music
and Dramatic Arts. His political entanglements
and disagreements with the Communist Party,
however, ultimately led to the threat of a loss of
his employment. Kundera was involved in the lib-
eralization of Czechoslovakia in 1967 to 1968.
After the Soviet occupation, he was attacked by the
authorities for his liberal beliefs and ousted once
again. In 1969, he was fired from his job, and his
works were banned from legal publication in
Czechoslovakia.
Kundera is best known internationally for his
novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984),
which was made into a film of the same name in
1988 by American film director Philip Kauffman.
The novel tells the story of four relationships. It
primarily focuses on the character of Thomas, a
man torn between loving his wife and sustaining
his erotic adventures and extramarital affairs. At
the beginning of the novel, Kundera asks, “What
then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?” The
lives of these characters are shaped not only by the
choices they make but also by the desires and de-
mands of society and history; thus, Kundera looks
at the ways in which history and choice shape life
and identity.
Kundera is a prolific writer. In his early career,
several volumes of short stories, as well as a suc-
cessful one-act play, The Owners of the Keys (1962),
were followed by the publication of his first novel,
The Joke (1967; translated 1982). This comedic
work takes an ironic look at the private lives of var-
ious people in Czechoslovakia during the years of
Stalinism. It has been translated into numerous
languages and has achieved international acclaim.
This was followed by a second novel, Life Is Else-
where (1969; translated 1974), about a hopeless ro-
mantic who embraces the 1948 Communist
takeover. This novel was banned immediately from
Czech publication. Kundera’s subsequent novels,
including The Farewell Party (1976), The Book of
Laughter and Forgetting (1979; translated 1980),
and The Unbearable Lightness of Being were banned
in Czechoslovakia but were published in France
and other countries. The Book of Laughter and For-
getting was among his most successful novels, per-
haps because it pointed to one of the harsher truths
of Kundera’s homeland: humankind’s propensity to
deny or erase historical truths.
In a collection of essays titled The Art of the
Novel (1988), Kundera writes that a novel must be
“autonomous,” that it should be created independ-
ently of any political belief system. In 1975, in re-
sponse to the suppression of his work, Kundera
was allowed to emigrate to France. He took a
teaching post at the University of Rennes, where he
remained on the faculty until 1978. In 1979, the
Czech government revoked his citizenship. Kun-
dera continues to write works that are humorous
yet skeptical and pessimistic in their depictions of
humanity, whether under Communist rule or else-
where.
Other Works by Milan Kundera
Identity. Translated by Linda Asher. New York: Harper
Flamingo, 1998.
Slowness. Translated by Linda Asher. Boston: Faber
and Faber, 1996.
Testaments Betrayed. Translated by Linda Asher.
Boston: Faber and Faber, 1996.
Works about Milan Kundera
Misurella, Fred. Understanding Milan Kundera: Public
Events, Private Affairs. Columbia: University of
South Carolina Press, 1993.
Kundera, Milan 245
Petro, Peter, ed. Critical Essays on Milan Kundera.
New York: G. K. Hall, 1999.
Kunene, Mazisi (1930– ) poet
Mazisi Kunene was born in Durban, South Africa.
He began writing poetry as a boy and by the age of
10 was already submitting poems to local newspa-
pers and magazines. Kunene taught for four years
in Natal, where he obtained his master’s degree. In
1959, he went to London to further his studies in
the School of Oriental and African Studies at the
University of London. In London, he founded the
Anti-Apartheid Movement and became the direc-
tor of education for the South African United
Front. Kunene spent 34 years in exile in England
and the United States for his leadership in the an-
tiapartheid movement. He finally returned to
South Africa in 1993 and became a professor in the
Department of Zulu Language and Literature in
the University of Natal, where he still works today.
In the same year, he was appointed Africa’s poet
laureate in the United Nation’s Education, Science
and Cultural Organization.
Kunene’s poetry shows how the concerns and
themes of his Zulu heritage can be used to enhance
an understanding of South African history and so-
ciety. His poems, such as “Encounter with the An-
cestors” (1982), draw on the rich images and
symbols of Zulu myths. They reveal ideas such as
the virtues and wisdom of ancestors, which have
been transmitted from generation to generation in
Zulu oral tradition. His poetry expresses the rele-
vance of these motifs in South African society today.
Kunene’s intimate involvement in the political
movement against apartheid is also an essential el-
ement of his works, which, perhaps, explains why
his first volume of poems, Zulu Poems (1970), was
banned for many years in South Africa. One of his
two epic poems, Emperor Shaka the Great, cele-
brates the heroism and strength of Shaka Zulu, the
founder of the Zulu nation. Kunene’s favorable de-
piction of Shaka as a hero challenges the Eurocen-
tric portrayal of the man as a tyrannical despot.
His other epic poem Anthem of the Decades was
published in 1981. Both poems were first pub-
lished in the Zulu language and later translated
into English.
In recognition of Kunene’s contributions to
African literature, the Mazisi Kunene Library was
jointly established by Create Africa South and the
Kunene family. Its aims are to fund study in the
Zulu language, to publish and distribute Kunene
and other writers’ works in the Zulu language, and
to provide research facilities for scholars interested
in South African history and society. Kunene’s
writing stands apart from other African voices that
speak of alienation and anger. His works, especially
the two epic poems, showcase the glory and
richness of the African traditions and challenge
Western readers to accept and appreciate the im-
portance of African cultures. His use of Zulu lan-
guage and style also provides a medium through
which African cultural symbols and thought are
effectively transmitted without appropriating Eng-
lish or other European diction.
Another Work by Mazisi Kunene
The Ancestors and the Sacred Mountain. London:
Heinemann, 1982.
Works about Mazisi Kunene
Barnett, Ursula. A Vision of Order: A Study of Black
South African Literature in English (1914–1980).
Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press/Lon-
don: Sinclair Browne, 1983.
Goodwin, K. L. Understanding Poetry: A Study of Ten
Poets. London: Heinemann, 1982.
Haynes, John.“Kunene’s Shaka and the Idea of a Poet
as Teacher.” Ariel 18, no. 1 (1987): 39–50.
Maduka, Chidi.“Poetry, Humanism and Apartheid: A
Study of Mazisi Kunene’s Zulu Poems,” Griot 4,
nos. 1–2 (1985): 57–72.
Kunert, Günter (1929– ) poet, short-story
writer
Günter Kunert was born in Berlin four years be-
fore the Nazi rise to power. Because his mother was
Jewish, he faced discrimination and was prevented
246 Kunene, Mazisi
from completing grammar school. After the war, he
attended Berlin Kunsthochschule, an art institute.
While a teenager, he switched his focus from art to
literature and published his first poems and prose
in the Ulenspiegel (Joker) magazine. An idealistic
socialist at an early age, Kunert joined the Socialist
Unity Party in East Germany in 1949. Three years
later, he married Marianne Todten, whose critical
assistance greatly benefited his writing career.
Kunert’s first collection of poetry, Wegschilder
und Mauerinschriften (Road Signs and Wall
Writings, 1950), made a significant literary impact.
In 1952, the German poet Bertolt BRECHT, one of
Kunert’s influences, praised him as a gifted young
poet. During the following three decades, Kunert
published more than 20 works of poetry, prose,
and essays as well as one novel. In the mid-1960s,
he became critical of East Germany’s socialist gov-
ernment. In the 1970s, he joined Sarah KIRSCH and
Christa WOLF in protesting the revoking of the
singer Wolf Biermann’s citizenship. Kunert was
then harassed and lost his party membership. He
moved to West Germany in 1979.
Kunert is considered a master of the epigram,
the parable, the satire, and the use of aphoristic
form to express a principle in a short work. His
writing was serious, ironic, and grotesque. He took
a firm stand against misuse of the language. Kunert
frequently dealt with contemporary concerns—
such as greed, poverty, and injustice—and was
committed to remembering the victims of past
persecutions. Although his writing became in-
creasingly pessimistic after the mid-1960s, Kunert
is known for the integrity of his work. His many
awards include the Johannes R. Becher Prize.
Another Work by Günter Kunert
Windy Times: Poems and Prose. Translated by Agnes
Stein. New York: Red Dust, 1983.
Kurahashi Yumiko (Kumagai Yumiko)
(1935– ) novelist, short-story writer
Kurahashi Yumiko was born in Ko¯chi, Shikuoka
Prefecture, to dentist Kurahashi Toshiro¯ and his
wife, Misae. Kurahashi entered Kyoto Women’s
College in 1953 and, in 1955, enrolled in Japanese
Women’s Junior College of Hygiene in Tokyo to
become a dental hygienist at her father’s practice.
However, she surprised her family when, upon
graduation, she enrolled as an undergraduate in
the French Department of Meiji University. Upon
completing the program, she started graduate
school but returned home when her father died in
1962. Two years later, she married photographer
Kumagai Tomihiro and later attended the Univer-
sity of Iowa’s creative-writing program under a
Fulbright Fellowship in 1966.
Kurahashi’s writing garnered notice while she
was still an undergraduate. Her short story “Party”
(1960) won both the Meiji University Chancellor’s
Award in 1960 and the Women’s Literary Award in
1961. She quickly followed with her first novel,
Blue Journey (1961), a story about a woman’s
search for the man to whom she is engaged. In
1969, Kurahashi published The Adventures of
Sumiyakist Q, which portrays the attempts of a
man to convert people secretly to an imaginary
ideology called Sumiyakism. Shortly after her re-
turn from studying in the United States, Kurahashi
initiated a series of novels centered on the life of a
woman named Keiko with the publication of A
Floating Bridge of Dreams (1969). In this ongoing
series, Kurahashi creates a parallel fictional world
that continues through several generations of
Keiko’s family.
Kurahashi is known both for writing complex
stories that are presented with striking clarity and
for her inclusion of controversial subjects, such as
incest and partner swapping, in her stories. In ad-
dition to her prizes for “Party,” she won the
Tamura Toshiko Award in 1963 and the Izumi
Kyo¯ka Memorial Prize in 1987.
Other Works by Kurahashi Yumiko
“The Monastery.” Translated by Carolyn Haynes. In
Van C. Gessel and Tomone Matsumoto, eds., The
Sho¯wa Anthology: Modern Japanese Short Stories.
Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1985.
Kurahashi Yumiko 247