SAMIZDAT Milan Kundera: A tréfa (The Joke) Budapest, AB Független Kiadó, 1987 Illegal Hungarian samizdat edition of Milan Kundera's famous novel on Communist Czechoslovakia, The Joke, written in 1967. The Joke was legally published in Hungary in 1968 but was withdrawn from bookshops and destroyed by Communist authorities. Published by Gábor Demszky's samizdat workshop "AB Independent Publishers." Gábor Demszky (1952-) is a political activist, member of the illegal Hungarian anti-communist movement. After the collapse of Communism, he became the first democratically elected Mayor of Budapest (1990-2010). As an illegal printer, Demszky published several samizdats in his workshop in the 1980's. Cover art by László Rajk Jr. László Rajk Jr. (1949-2019) was an architect, visual artist and political activist. Member of the illegal Hungarian anti-communist movement before the collapse of Communism; member of the Hungarian Parliament after the first democratic elections in 1990. Rajk designed several cover art for the samizdat publications in his characteristic neoavantgarde - neoconstructivist style. "Samizdat" means "self-published" in Russian. It refers to illegally published books in the Soviet Union and in the Eastern Bloc that were created on makeshift appliances (typewriters, carbon paper, simple printing machines). Creators, distributors and readers of Samizdat faced retribution for anti-socialist behaviour.