Sametový Herodes – Michalec Libor (2016)

He was one of the best reporters of the first Czech luxury travel magazine, created after the Velvet Revolution out of the enthusiasm of a few friends. He visited over forty countries, married his college sweetheart, renovated his family home, became the deputy editor-in-chief, and a father of two daughters. Then came the fall. It took the form of schizophrenia – a Velvet Herod strangling with a plush paw and ruthlessly destroying identity, dreams, plans, and hopes. Two suicide attempts, the loss of a prestigious job, and a piece of himself, doubts about the meaning of existence, a struggle to maintain dignity and family, a life on the sine wave of euphoric peaks and plunges into the deepest depression is described by Libor Michalec with chilling matter-of-factness and painful honesty in a colloquial and unpretentious language. The rawness of the testimony invites comparison with the Hollywood adaptation of the story of the recently deceased American mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr., a Nobel Prize winner for his contributions to game theory, who also battled schizophrenia (the film about his fate is called A Beautiful Mind).