This is the first Russian book about the work of Milan Kundera, the world's most famous Czech writer of the late XX - early XXI centuries. One of the ideologists of the Prague Spring, he has been living in France since 1975 and after his fifth novel, Immortality (1990), switched to French. Kundera created the original genre of "reflective novel"; in his theoretical essays, he sees the novel as a very special kind of literature, describes its history, poetics and significance for the modern era. This book analyzes all Kundera's novels, his theoretical concept and the features of his "novel philosophy."