Charles Ota Heller

For my Czech-speaking readers: you may be interested in a two-part interview which appeared on the website TOPZINE. Here are the links: http://www.topzine.cz/charles-o-heller-svuj-vystrel-na-nemeckeho-vojaka-si-pamatuji-jako-by-se-to-stalo-vcera http://www.topzine.cz/charles-o-heller-za-komunismu-me-sebrala-stb I would be interested in your comments.

Several friends who have followed my blogs about my “magical book tour” have asked why I haven’t shown the photo on the cover of my book. Thank you all for the heads-up. Here is the beautiful, melancholy image of a family on the bank of the river Vltava by Czech photographer Pavel Kolin.

In order to save shipping costs for Czech-speaking North Americans who wish to purchase Dlouha cesta domu, we have made arrangements with a Canadian book-selling web site from which the book can be ordered. Please go on                                               http://www.czech-books.com/ and request Dlouha cesta domu by Charles Ota Heller. Thank you.

On the way to the Prague airport at five in the morning, I asked our friend Vlada to turn on the radio in order to catch the weather forecast. The first announcement we heard was: “Osama bin Laden is dead!” After a brief celebration, I experienced a selfish reaction. “Why couldn’t they have waited a day?”…

The formal book tour finished, Sue and I are free to spend the weekend with friends. Saturday is devoted to time with my distant cousin, Sylva Pustina (right in bottom photo), her husband Karel, and son Daniel (left in photo). All escaped from the communist regime and reside in Germany. Sylva and Karel have been at…

I have Friday morning off. Sue and I walk to Josefov, site of a memorial where the names of 77,000 Czech victims of the Holocaust are printed on walls, in the manner of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington. The martyrs are listed by their home towns. Each time we go, I find another member of…

I have reserved most of Thursday for our traditional loop of Prague-Kralupy-Melnik-Kojetice-Prague. My father was born and grew up in Kralupy. Melnik castle sits high on a hilltop, overlooking the confluence of the nation’s two great rivers — Vltava (Moldau) and Labe (Elbe) — and overlooks the mountain Rip, which is important both in the…

Following an interview with the magazine “Sedmicka” (“Seven”) — one of many periodicals owned by my publisher, Mlada Fronta — I change into the new suit I had bought expressly for the Big Occasion. Sue and I walk (in Prague, one nearly always walks) to Wenceslas Square and to the Luxor bookstore, where the book…

It’s time to get to work. At 8 am, I meet with Antonin (Tony) Koci and Magdalena Potmesilova of Mlada Fronta, my publisher. They brief me about the national TV show, called CT24, on which I will appear this morning at 10:10. The show is the equivalent of America’s morning shows, and my segment will be ten…

Today is a day off, in preparation for a superbusy week. It’s Easter Monday, a national holiday in the Czech Republic. The irony is not lost on me: the world’s most atheist (nearly 80%) nation celebrates Easter Monday! That’s a subject I need to explore at another time. Sue and I spend the day at…