Ľuba Lesná


Ľuba Lesná is a contemporary Slovak investigative journalist, filmmaker, novelist, and playwright. While her earlier work focused on plays, since Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution she has worked primarily as a journalist, writing also several books and a novel, Prípad medička, being rewritten as a play. Lesná worked with Prime Minister Iveta Radičová, as an analyst in the Slovak Office of the Government from 2010-2012.

Education

Non-fiction
Fiction
"The novel Prípad medička is and is not about the actual murder of medical student Ľudmila Cervanová. It is, because Ľuba Lesná became familiar with this affair over a long period of time and discovered many facts and a lot of information used in the book. And it is not, because the novel is written as a literary fiction about the abduction and murder of a character, medical student Alena Hronská. Why did the famous author of non-fiction books not stick to pure facts this time? And why did she decide to risk telling her own version of this affair? Because, as she says herself in the book's introduction, according to pure facts and documents it should be clear to readers that this case did not take place the way that official police and judicial versions described it. The question — so what happened? — remains unanswered."
"Just make sure nobody ever finds out what really happened. I have borrowed this sentence from Ľuba Lesná’s book, Prípad medička... One can’t help asking — could all this really be true? Because, if the murder of the medical student really happened the way the author describes it why has the truth not prevailed? The answer is probably in the times we live in, in our reality that easily turns lies into truth... While reading Ľuba Lesná’s latest book I could not get the first sentence from Péter Esterházy out of my head: 'It’s bloody hard to lie if one does not know the complete truth.' And I don’t mean the book’s 'heroes', the ŠtB officers... Luckily, the medical student’s sad story reminds us that the truth, even if revealed only in part, has the power to awaken our conscience, albeit painfully, with adrenaline throbbing in our veins. That is why politicians and many public officials consider it an unwanted commodity."
"'The time is not yet right for me to speak the truth about the medical student’s case, he said in his unforgettable sonorous voice...' I quote from the book Prípad medička by Ľuba Lesná, inspired — quite openly — by Ľudmila Cervanová’s murder. Although it is a work of fiction, the author cannot hide the fact that she is a journalist par excellence, or her extraordinary personal commitment to uncovering the centre of the disgusting octopus, the nerve centre of an operation that entangled and destroyed six innocent lives. Ľuba Lesná seems to have intimate knowledge of all these horrors and because 'the time is not yet right' for the truth to come out, she had to do it herself, by turning Cervanová’s case into fiction. I salute you, Mrs. Lesná!..."
"If the adversary in a detective story is a simpleton, the discovery of his identity is rarely pleasurable for the reader... The author of the novel demonstrates on a broad scale that everything in this case was fabricated by the communist intelligence service. All the ambitious investigator wanted to do was to indict as many young people as possible and he couldn't care less whether they were guilty or not, or if they had the means to commit the crime or not. Eventually the reader finds out that everything boils down to the so-called Arab link—the terrorist training facility for Arab students at Piešťany airport."