Novelist, playwright, screen writer and, most importantly, author of books for children and young adults, Hermína Franková, née Mračková, was born on 6 July 1928 in Prague. Her family was in trade, and she read pharmacy and, from 1954, worked as a chemist in a pharmacy. Later she was a PR assistant in the state organization, Medicinal Plants (Léčivé rostliny). She made her debut in 1959, when her stories were published in the magazines, Flame (Plamen) and Guest in the House (Host do domu). She started to get more work published in the early 1960s but had to return to pharmacy, from 1972 to 1980, when she was forbidden to publish under her own name. As a result, her fiction for young adults was published under assumed names, Josef Vinař and Jarmila Černíková. Since 1980, she has been a freelance writer. Currently, she divides her time between Prague and South Bohemia.
It was as early as in her first books, for example, Do Children Pay Reduced Fare? (Děti platí polovic?), published in 1961, that Franková showed her skills in understanding children's minds and depicting their fragile, yet cruel world without any false sentimentality. In the middle of the 1960s, the critics started to see her as one of the more prominent representatives of a so-called "New Wave" of literature for children and young adults. Her novellas for young adult readers, Madmen and Pythagoras (Blázni a Pythagoras), published in 1966, and Madmen Have a Permit (Blázni mají propustku), published in 1969 describe openly and with humour the inner problems of young adults in conflict with the conventions and hypocrisy of the adult world.
A common trait of Franková's girl protagonists is their free mindedness and an almost instinctive desire for knowledge and learning. The texts are, however, far from being simplistic, mainly due to their sense of self irony. Franková uses humour and self irony, even in those books set in the difficult times in which her characters grow up. For example, her novella, Wendy or French for Advanced Students (Vendula aneb Francouzština pro pokročilé), published in 1981, is set during the German occupation, while in Minervist (Minervistka), published in 1984, and A Chemist's Girl (Lékárníkovic holka), published in 1996, her female characters have to face up to the rigid views that society at the end of the 19th century had of women, and they have to fight for their right to live as they want. Both novels were later adapted for the screen.
The latest published novel by Franková, Breathing Is Crucial (Hlavně dýchat), published in 2006, was written for adults. It confirms the author's skills of sensitive, yet ironic introspection in the way in which she describes the fates of her characters. An ageing, translator, Christine, returns to the places where she studied at secondary school. Meeting her former friends and lovers, her mind is full of memories which are in conflict with what she has experienced in later life. Her attempts to face up to oncoming old age are made, sometimes bravely, sometimes by expressing her feelings as both tragic and comic.
For young readers, Franková has written fairy tales and stories in which she has used her rich skills in fantasy and her ability to use colorful associations, to create stories with a humorous or philosophical message, as for example The Cabin Boy and the Sardines (Plavčík a sardinky), published in 1965.
An original mix of reality and imagination and a simple idea full of funny details which sometimes turns into "crazy comedy" are the foundation stones of Franková's most successful and critically acclaimed works. A film by Václav Vorlíček, Girl on the Broomstick (Dívka na koštěti), based on her synopsis, was made in 1971. Miloš Macourek co-authored the script. Franková also wrote the sequel to the story of a young witch who gets stuck by accident in the world of humans, and eventually chooses it as a place to live. In 2006, she published it under the title, The Witch Without a Broomstick (Čarodějnice bez koštěte). She continued to work with Miloš Macourek, and the results of this cooperation have been fruitful: in 1989, Franková published a book version of the TV series, How To Direct Engineer Křeček (Jak řídit inženýra Křečka), and in 1991, 1993 and 1994, she published a version of the three-season TV series, Arabella (Arabela). Franková and Macourek also wrote the script for Radúz Činčera's, Kinolabyrinth.
In 2008, Hermína Franková received the Golden Ribbon Award (Zlatá stuha) for her lifetime contribution to literature for children and young adults.
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The profile updated as of 1 June 2009.
