Building bridges Philip Roth, who championed his work abroad while he was banned at home, found a kinship between Klíma and Kundera in their "affinity for the erotically vulnerable, their struggle against political despair, their brooding over social excreta, whether garbage or kitsch", and their "fixation on the fate of outcasts". Yet for Roth, Klíma is Kundera's antithesis, his tenderness "unchecked and unguarded by irony". His quiet, unexuberant prose, and droll, often partially autobiographical fiction, have a transparent honesty. As a writer he has always regarded literature as a means to freedom, a "form of hope".
