Příběh pana Rytíře Vítka a jeho dcery Anežky – Motýl Petr (2020)

Do you enjoy listening to stories from old times? By the fireplace, where the logs crackle while the wind bends the crowns of fir trees in the deep Šumava forest? A knight and love, a villain and a talkative servant, creatures of the forest and night... Petr Motýl, an experienced prose writer, spent his childhood in the "gateway to Šumava" in the town of Klatovy, and in this book, he returns to the world of storytelling he heard as a little boy, to the world of adventurous books from long ago that he borrowed from the Klatovy library. The history of the noble family from Třešňová unfolds at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries, beginning and ending at a fortress beneath the deep forest. The text radiates the author's joy in storytelling; he delves into old legends in his own way, introduces Šumava giants onto the pages of the book, lets a nobleman from Šumava fight with Charles IV in Italy, and describes the beauty of Šumava's nature. He acknowledges many of his literary predecessors, from the Zbraslav Chronicle through Vančura's Marketka Lazarová to the fairy tales of the French peasant Henri Pourrat, who became established in Bohemia. "On the shoulders of giants," however, Petr Motýl stands on his own feet, and his work is highly convincing and distinctive in style.