Kundera and Modernity

Acknowledgments

ix Acknowledgments Milan Kundera's oeuvre first raised my interest when in the late 1980s I was working on a book about the postmodernist novel, which I interpreted as "postindividualistic ." Postindividualistinen romaani (The Postindividualistic Novel) was published in 1992, and in 1994 a German translation followed, entitled Der postindividualistische Roman, both under my then surname Saariluoma. At the time of my research for the book I intended to include analyses of Kundera's novels, but soon noticed that he does not fit in the framework I developed for the analysis. His novels do not fit because he is not a postmodernist (or "postindividualistic") writer, but a late representative of modernist thinking in the novel. A year as a senior research fellow at the Academy of Finland enabled me to continue my analysis of Kundera's work and Milan Kundera, viimeinen modernisti (Milan Kundera, the Last Modernist) was published in 2005, of which Kundera and Modernity is a substantially revised and updated version. I thank the publisher, Faros, and its director Hannu Salmi, for the copyright release for the English version of the book. I thank my colleagues, who encouraged and helped me in preparing Kundera and Modernity, above all Kübra Ataman-Outinen, Viola Parente-Čapková, and Edith Ulmer. My special thanks go to the always friendly and helpful staff of Turku University Library, without whose assistance this book would not have been possible . I am grateful to Ellen Valle, who assisted me in the revision of my English translation of the Finnish original. My spouse, Magnus Steinby, encouraged and supported me in every possible way. I thank the anonymous reviewers of the English manuscript for their comments to improve my work. Last but not least I thank the editor of the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies, Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, not only for accepting the book into his series, but also for his help in revising the book for publication. Liisa Steinby, Turku 10 July 2012 This page intentionally left blank. ...