Authors

While studying English she also took a course in dramatic education at Masaryk University in Brno. Since 1993 she has been working in Litoměřice as a teacher at a primary school with extensive teaching in language and mathematics.

Renata Štulcová debuted in 2003 with the book Nemetonburk aneb Tajemství ve skále. Two years later came the follow up, Nemetonburk aneb Zlatá brána. She is currently completing the final part of the trilogy, Nemetonburk aneb Alatýrová hora, and is also preparing the supplementary Knihu her. Renata Štulcová is one of the newest authors of children’s literature. Although she has only published two books so far, she has relatively quickly caught the attention of readers and critics alike. In terms of genre Nemetonburk can be best placed alongside the wide spectrum of stories which have children as the main characters along with significant elements of fantasy and adventure literature. Amongst fantasy literature Nemetonburk is unique in that to a large degree it uses a Czech environment which will be familair to a Czech readership. The basis of the story is set in the present, however a complication both for the protagonists and the reader is that it is always being led off to the borders of space and time. The main characters of the series are the twins Tom and Áňa who at the start are thirteen and in the second installment are two years older. However, they are not just Tom and Áňa, but also Thomas František Loukoský and Anna Marie Loukoská, who do not live in a tenement or a block of flats but in Nemetonburk castle, family seat of the Loukoskýs from Loukos, and a written test on a Friday afternoon is the worst they might experience. In Tajemství ve skále, along with their other two relatives they enter into another time-space through a labyrinth under the family castle, they free a secret stranger who then marries their older sister, they gain the magic amulet for the Crystal Lake and begin to unravel intricate puzzles from the family history. In Zlatá brána (Golden Gate) they are at the start of strange and dangerous events at the Venice carnival and also at the waterfalls at the Plitivice lakes – a bridge to the world behind the Zlatá brána, to which it is connected much more than at first might appear. The forces of evil, which for unknown reasons are following various members of the Loukoský family, appear once more and this time are endeavouring to take the life of the main characters and those nearest to them. Just from this vague outline of the first two books it is obvious that the main features of Renata Štulcová’s style, at least in Nemetonburk, are: adventure, secrecy, riddles and reality combined and strongly connected to non-reality. Štulcová also does not hide her close relationship to mathematics, logic, informatics and at the same time a love of history and pseudo-history – especially of the old Slavonic sagas and myths. In both works there appear perhaps too many motifs, which is the main weakness of the whole narrative and the writer’s style. Štulcová knows how to write an exciting story with a quickly unfolding plot, her main charcters provide easy models to identify with and behave naturally, just as with the environment of the real world which they inhabit from the start. The second “non-real” world, whether it is inspired by ancient history or the old Slavonic legends and sagas seems in places to be overly elaborate with a confusing number of characters and regular plot reversals indicating further possible riddles. Despite this, Nemetonburk has secured its righful place in contemporary (and not only Czech) literature for children and young people. This is also demonstrated by the awards which it received in 2003 for the first part Tajemství ve skále: nominated for the Zlatá stuha, Čestné uznání Albatrosu, the Teacher’s Prize in the Suk opinion poll. More importantly, Renata Štulcová’s works have attracted the child reader as is evident from conversations in libraries and schools as well as Tom and Áňa Loukoský’s “official” website (www.sweb.cz/tomas.loukosky) and from discussions elsewhere on the internet. Renata Štulcová crowned the Nemetonburk Trilogy with the final book Alatýrová hora. The author’s latest publication is the book Růže a krokvice (Knižní klub, 2009).