Lost In Translation

Decades ago, when Czechs wanted to read their country's most famous author, Milan Kundera, they often had to resort to samizdat — the clandestine copying and distribution of government-suppressed literature or other media in Soviet-bloc countries. Now those who want to read him in his mother tongue are still consulting pirate versions — not because of censorship, but because of Kundera's perfectionism.

The 77-year-old, who wrote his last three novels in French, insists on translating them into Czech himself — and he's in no hurry. So when one impatient anonymous literary toiler posted an illegal translation of Kundera's second-to-last novel, Identity, to the Blogger.com site in June, "he was upset," says his friend and Czech agent, Jirí Srstka. Srstka's agency wants Google — which owns Blogger.com — to pull the bootlegged version.

Perhaps benign neglect would preserve the writer's reputation just as well. Petr Sruta, a teacher who recalls wonderful youthful encounters with banned Kundera novels, quit reading five pages into the pirated Identity. "It's simply not Kundera," he says.