Literary fiction
The story of this book is told by a young girl who is at once smart and naive. Helenka guides us through the first years of the “government” of the communist president Husák, describing comic as well as less amusing episodes and situations involving children and grown-ups in one town in the course of a year. The short episodes create a compact story which reveals both the small and greater tragedies of Helenka’s childhood, all presented with a comforting forgiveness.
An extraordinarily successful, frequently reprinted bestseller. Often repeated on Czech television in its stage adaptation, Hrdý Budžes has come to be one of the most famous Czech prose works published since the Velvet Revolution. In the Czech Republic alone more than 65,000 copies have been sold.
In 2006, Irena Dousková published a free continuation of B. Proudew under the title Onegin was a Rusky / Oněgin byl Rusák and another sequel in 2011 (Darda / Darda). Both these books became bestsellers immediately after publishing.
Information about the original Czech edition
Other selected published translations (3)
Der tapfere Bella Tschau German
Dumny Bądźżeś Polish
B. Proudew English