The Accidental Dissident explores treachery, redemption, and revenge through three characters’ conflicting accounts of a real-life betrayal and its consequences. Although it is a work of fiction, the novel was inspired by an event in the life of Milan Kundera.
The Story
The Accidental Dissident tells the story of three political dissidents and their difficult relationships with the past and each other. Milos is a famous author struggling with writer’s block, his relationship with his distant homeland, and a sense of being an imposter. Ivan spent two decades as a political prisoner and seeks revenge and catharsis through writing. Juliska is an artist who navigates conflicting feelings of complicity, loyalty, and betrayal, in both her life and her art. The novel explores the creative process itself, and the battle between storytelling and truth telling.
Inspiration
The story is inspired by true events. Late in his career, the famous Czech author, Milan Kundera, was accused of having informed on a fellow political dissident as young man. Kundera denied the charge and many of the world’s greatest writers, led by Salman Rushdie, insisted on his innocence. Yet the story is the sort of tragi-comic tale Kundera himself could have written: a dissident who, out of misplaced, youthful idealism, causes the incarceration of a man for twenty-two years by the totalitarian regime he would later famously satirize and vilify. This novel imagines how such a story could have unfolded.