Carmen – Skutečný život Hany Hegerové – Padevět Tomáš (2021)

The first and only comprehensive documentary novel about the greatest Czech-Slovak chanson singer. It was created with her consent, on the condition that it could be published only after her death. Throughout her career, she avoided such revelations, consistently defending her privacy. She allowed entry into it only to the author, who was one of her closest friends. From 2011, when she ended her career, until her last moments in March 2021, he became her confessor. He recorded dozens of hours of interviews, had access to her private life, archival materials, personal correspondence, and to Hana Hegerová's family, and as one of the first, he could also look into her court files. He traveled and mapped all the places connected with her life, spoke with nearly a hundred people who collaborated with her or were in closer contact during some period of her life story. He gathered a large number of photographs and documents, which are published in the book for the first time. There was no topic they did not want to discuss. Here, for the first time, she openly recounts her childhood during the Slovak fascist state, which marked her for life, as well as her stay in a refugee camp, changes of identity, communist prison, and other, still...