Two classic works of Czech-born writer Milan Kundera have been published in China by the Shanghai Translation Publishing House. 

Kundera's only short-story collection Laughable Loves and his novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting are among nine of his works published to date by the Shanghai Translation Publishing House.

Kundera reached agreements in May 2002 to license the Shanghai company to publish 13 of his representative works in China.

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting once earned Kundera "Prix Medicis," one of France's most prestigious literary awards.

Kundera, born in May of 1929, departed what was then Czechoslovakia to France in 1975 and was naturalized in 1981.

(Xinhua News Agency January 5, 2004)