The kidnapped West

Author's name: Milan Kundera

The book contains a kind of accusation because the tragedy of “small nations,” as Kundera describes it, is in fact the tragedy of Europe itself, which has been indifferent and unnoticed to the danger threatening these nations. Kundera says in the book: “The proud narrow-minded (…) believes that the ability to conform the world to its image is part of its indisputable rights, and since the world is essentially composed of everything that transcends it, it conforms the world to its image by destroying it (…). Those who live their present in isolation from its context, who ignore historical continuity and lack culture, are capable of transforming their homeland into a desert without history, without memory, without echo, a homeland devoid of all the elements of beauty.” In this regard, translator Abdul Majeed Sebata said, “This translation project began as part of the Arab Cultural Center’s efforts to complete the publication of all the Czech writer’s literary and critical works in Arabic. I took on the work on the book, in addition to the play “Jacques et Maître, A Tribute to Denis Diderot in Three Acts.”