NY Times rozhovor Philipa Rotha s Milanem Kunderou z listopadu 1980:
PR: Do you think the destruction of the world is coming soon?
MK: That depends on what you mean by the word "soon."
PR: Tomorrow or the day after.
MK: The feeling that the world is rushing to ruin is an ancient one.
PR: So then we have nothing to worry about.
MK: On the contrary. If a fear has been present in the human mind for ages, there must be something to it.
PR: In any event, it seems to me that this concern is the background against which all the stories in your latest book take place, even those that are of a decidedly humorous nature.
MK: If someone had told me as a boy: One day you will see your nation vanish from the world, I would have considered it nonsense, something I couldn't possibly imagine. A man knows he is mortal, but he takes it for granted that his nation possesses a kind of eternal life. But after the Russian invasion of 1968, every Czech was confronted with the thought that his nation could be quietly erased from Europe, just as over the past five decades 40 million Ukrainians have been quietly vanishing from the world without the world paying any heed. Or Lithuanians. Do you know that in the 17th century, Lithuania was a powerful European nation? Today the Russians keep Lithuanians on their reservation like a half-extinct tribe; they are sealed off from the visitors to prevent knowledge about their existence from reaching the outside. I don't know what the future holds for my nation. It is certain that the Russians will do everything they can to dissolve it gradually into their own civilization. Nobody knows whether they will succeed. But the possibility; is here. And the sudden realization that such a possibility exists is enough to change one's whole sense of life. Nowadays I even see Europe as fragile, mortal.
