Markéta Burman was born in 1968 in Litoměřice (Northern Bohemia) but she has lived in Prague all her life. Her father worked at the Ministry of the Interior. He had a strong social feeling, so he joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. After the August invasion of Warsaw Pact troops in Czechoslovakia in 1968, he had to leave the Ministry of the Interior due to his pro-reform attitudes. Still, he managed to get a job at a research institute, where he worked until 1989. Burman’s mother has strong anti-communist attitudes. The father decided that the daughter/narrator would study at the Secondary School of Economics because it was “the best for the girl”. However, Markéta didn’t like it at all, she hated accounting, money, economics, she only enjoyed learning foreign languages. After graduation, she took up an administrative position in the agency Dilia, a monopoly agency representing Czechoslovak artists abroad, and she worked here until the 1990s. In her youth, she connects with a group of young evangelicals, and through friends, she also acquired an awareness of dissent. She actively participated in the events in November 1989, took part in demonstrations, in the general strike.

She got married in 1986, her son was born in 1991 and a daughter in 1993. The narrator was on maternity leave until 1997 and she describes it as a time of frustration when she tried to get at least a part-time job. It was easy for her because she masters accounting. She worked as an accountant until the year 2000 and she works in various economic professions to these days. Later, she divorced, and since 2010 has a new partner (American), whom she got married. At a more mature age, she returned to her original ambitions to obtain a university degree. Finally, in 2018 she graduated from the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, and got a degree in contemporary history – oral history.