Abstract
Autobiographies as broad, publicly received texts have a strong influence on the shape of collective sharing of ideas of the past. Autobiographies refer to real characters and events, but at the same time they are subjective literary works of art.
For the adequate interpretation of the text of autobiography is therefore necessary to analyse narrative strategies and techniques of selfpresentation of an author. This issue will be demonstrated primarily in the autobiography of the Czech authoress Heda Margolius Kovály (1919-2010) "Under a Cruel Star" (1973).
In August 1968, the armies of the Warsaw Pact countries invaded Czechoslovakia and in the period 1969-1987 the official narrative of the Communist Party described it as "brotherly help" to save Czechoslovakia "from the imminent danger of counterrevolution". Heda Margolius Kovaly fled the country to the United States in 1968.
In exile, she wrote a counter-story of the cultural and political development of the Czech nation. In her autobiography she described the Prague Spring (a period of political liberalization in 1960s) as hopeful time and the invasion as the tragic ending of it.
However, what was the role of Heda Margolius Kovaly in this story? How she depicts herself? Her life was dramatic, and in many ways tragic, but at the same time it included paradoxical and ambivalent situations. On the one hand, Heda Margolius Kovály was wife of one of the prominent Communist officials-Rudolf Margolius; on the other hand, her husband was found guilty of conspiracy during the show trial in 1952, sentenced to death and executed, her property was confiscated, she and her young son Ivan were persecuted...
What story she tells us about the Czech history? Was she victim, or culprit? And why do we believe her?