The Festival of Insignificance, the first novel in 13 years from The Unbearable Lightness of Being author Milan Kundera, will be published in June.

Faber, the publishers, will release The Festival of Insignificance, translated from the original French, on June 18.

The short novel was first published in Italy in 2013, and has topped book charts in Italy, Spain, Germany and France.

Faber has described the new book as a "wryly comic yet deeply serious glance at the ultimate insignificance of life and politics, told through the daily lives of four friends in modern-day Paris".

The French newspaper L'Express last year enthused as follows: "No, dear cynics, the novel is not dead. We have in France one of the greatest contemporary writers. He is called Milan Kundera, and you must read his new book as soon as possible – it could be his last, and it is magnificent, sunny, profound and funny."

 
Born in 1929 in Brno, Czechoslovakia, Kundera has lived in France for more than 40 years. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, published in English in 1984, was released as a highly successful film in 1988, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin.

Kundera is named each year as a likely contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the new book's publication may finally win him the accolade.