The Secret

Released
2021, Jota Publishing House

Prose
The incredible story of Agnes of Bohemia. Awarded the Magnesia Litera as Debut of the Year.

At the age of three, Anežka's father, the Bohemian King Přemysl Otakar I, betroths her to a Polish monastery and sends her to be raised. When her fiancé dies, Anežka returns to Prague, only to be sent shortly afterwards – at the age of eight – to the Austrian ducal court, where she is to find a husband.

When she returns home at the age of fourteen as a rejected bride and an insulted royal daughter, she rediscovers the fantastic world that her nanny Fenela once opened to her in Trebnica, Poland: a mystical world of stones, plants and animals, close to nature.

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Anežka increasingly distances herself from court life and prefers to spend time barefoot in the forest, where her soul is ignited by her first love. However, how impossible such a journey is for a princess from a powerful Central European family becomes clear when the emperor himself asks her to marry him.

In a story set against the backdrop of real historical events, the author sensitively follows the childhood and adolescence of a 13th-century girl and asks herself how she is shaped by social roles and power relations, what a child needs to live, and how her personality is formed. Combining a thrilling narrative, deep insight into the world of Anežka's experiences, and a realistically described historical situation, the story appeals to both women who are mothers themselves, as well as teenage girls and young women. It allows them to reflect on their own search, come to terms with social norms, and relive their own relationship to nature, family, sexuality, ambition, and duty.