This isn't the only fictional parallel to the Dvoracek affair. As Hradilek points out, the plot of Kundera's play, The Owner of the Keys (1962), set during the Second World War, seems reminiscent of the events of 1950. The protagonist Ji?í is tasked with harbouring his ex-lover Vera, then in flight from the Gestapo, at the home of his parents-in-law, and thus putting them and his wife in jeopardy. When he's discovered by the estate's caretaker, who threatens to inform on the whole family, Ji?í kills the man.

Kundera's difficult relationship with his homeland has not done him any public relations favours. He remains a paradox: an intensely private public writer who has dedicated himself in wondrously inventive ways to undoing the Big Lie. It is the atelier, not the agora, that he prefers: he has repeatedly renounced the role of "public figure", and inveighed against the methods of literary biography, disclaiming any nexus between novel and novelist. A master of his own secrecy, Kundera now stands accused of harbouring one of the dirtiest secrets a member of his generation could conceal.