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Eva Hudečková - writer
Prague - The Czech Republic

Eva Hudečková was born in Prague. She trained as an actor at the Drama Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and devoted herself to an acting career until 1984. As an actor she has taken many interesting roles in theatre, television and film, and has won several awards. .

Since the mid-Eighties she has devoted herself to writing,, and in 1992 made her publishing debut with her first book, "The Headless Mare". The novel was received with enthusiasm by readers and critics. It is a fascinating picture of the years that the author experienced in a family persecuted by the totalitarian regime, when "Dark cloud had buried the sun and people no longer knew what to do with their sins and their consciences."

"I often think about all the time and energy that people devote to their careers, aspiring to be good accountants, artists, scientists, politicians...but very few of them devote even a fraction of such tenacious efforts to becoming a good person. Perhaps we are not even aware of losing what is the most precious thing we have, which is the consciousness of common human destiny and ordinary human sympathy. We see only ourselves, our sphere of influence. We want to be famous and powerful, and to mark out our territory like a big dog, envied by the other smaller and thinner dogs that bark at it jealously, but fear it. We do not yearn to be merciful beings, since that would be ridiculous and a mark of weakness. We want to be big jungle beasts.

When I was small they were always telling me that I had to be kind and unselfish to everyone, because people deserved it. I had little difficulty in obeying, because I felt no hatred or envy towards anyone. But the world is as it is, and I sometimes felt deceived. Despite all disappointments, however, I am sure that the only path leading from human being to human being is the path of good, because the second path, full of blindness and hatred, leads only to destruction and extinction. And so I think about all our forebears (mine and yours) who managed to forget themselves and devoted their time, talents and love to the thankless task of ensuring that their children should grow up decent people..."

1993 saw publication of "Bratříček Golem" ["Little Brother Golem"], which is the author's highly distinctive and unique version of the old Prague legend - a captivating story full of charms, tension and humour, set in the mid-19th -century in the streets of the Prague Ghetto. It centres on the appearance of a small miraculous little Golem, who comes to the aid of endangered love and averts crime and injustice.

"Little Brother Golem" was dramatised in five parts by Czech Radio in 1996, and has been broadcast many times. The author's screenplay for the fairytale, "O zasněné Žofince" [About Dreamy Sophie" also became the basis for a successful production filmed by Czech Television..

Hudečková's next novel, "O ztracené lásce" ["About Lost Love"] came out in 1995. It is a dramatic picture of the fate of an unloved child born into a lost world, and rejected by her own parents because she failed to meet their expectations. The little girl Honza [Czech for "Johnny"], who is "guilty" of not being born a boy, grows up without love or attention, encountering more bad than good. Despite all these wrongs, however, she looks for love in her own heart as the only way to other people, since at every step she gets to understand that a world without love has no meaning. The novel was received with great acclaim, and the author accepted an offer from Czech Television and wrote the screenplay for a nine-part series "About Lost Love", which was finished in January 2001 and will be broadcast on Czech Television I in February 2002.
The author has also produced film screenplays of the exquisite fairytale, "Little Brother Golem" and the novel "The Headless Mare", and there are plans to make both.

In 1999 her book "V moci kouzel" ["Spellbound"] was published, three mysterious tales of "love without frontiers. ( O Betulce a Ohnivcovi [Betulka and the Fire Spirit], O Malusce a Safírov [Maluska and Sapphire] and O Borkovi, pánu skal [Borek, Lord of the Rocks])

This extract from a review by Irena Zitková in the magazine Literatura pro děti a mládež [Literature for Children and Young People] can stand for all the recognition that the author has achieved for the superb use of language, expressive power and moral credit of her works: "I confess that some paragraphs gave me the same kind of shiver one experiences when getting inside the emotions of one of the great characters of Shakespeare. Perhaps here the author's pen was guided by the nostalgia of an actress for her voluntarily renounced profession, and perhaps by displaced memories of childhood still present in the subconscious - once again I recall her first novel. It is never a matter of the whole text - this resembles a sky dark with storm clouds, which continually break, so that the observer for a moment sees their power and thickness, and as it were looks right through into the universe for a moment - or glimpses the depths of the human soul. Immediately the vista closes again, and the fairytale continues. But the painful knowledge, or if you like clairvoyance, remains in the reader's mind. In accord with the Greatest of Playwrights, and also with the title of the book, it is mirror of your own selves." Most of Eva Hudečková's books have gone through several editions, and are published by the Ikar Press, which is currently part of the Euromedia Group k. s. - Ikar in Prague.