Božena - Román o první české spisovatelce, která se stala legendou – Wlodarczyková Hana (2022)

What was the first lady of Czech literature really like? This novel, inspired by a successful television miniseries awarded the Czech Lion, presents a different Božena Němcová than the one we know from school textbooks. The main storyline revolves around the passionate and, in many ways, unhappy relationship between the talented and free-spirited woman and her fifteen years older husband, Josef Němec. The book challenges the black-and-white perception of Božena as a victim and her husband as a tyrant. It authentically depicts Božena's love life, which was socially unacceptable from the public's perspective in the mid-19th century. However, this does not harm the image of the real Božena Němcová. It reports on the desire of a sensitive and intelligent woman for freedom and for perfect, unrestricted love during the times of the Austrian monarchy. The story is populated with real characters of patriotic awakeners – writers, journalists, doctors, priests – as well as ordinary people, and flows from the bourgeois salons in Prague and Litomyšl to the wild nature of Šumava and Slovakia or to the bucolic landscape of Ratibořice and Česká Skalice. It beautifully illustrates the circumstances under which some of Božena Němcová's texts were created, such as her fairy tales, Babička, Obrazy z okolí domažlického... The reader is left to ponder what an extraordinarily gifted and fearless woman could have achieved during...