The story of the letters to Eva begins in 1970s, when young Dežo Ursiny was writing letters to Eva Rosenbaum. They are full of stories, love, struggles – these are the letters we do not write often today.

Dežo has never been a writer, although he always wanted to be one. He has written a lot of poems and lyrics, but most of all, letters. Few years ago, we published a book of his letters to Zdenka Krejčova named My Dear Lady. Those were letters to his last great love. A year ago, we also published letters written between Dežo and his son Kubo.

Eva Rosenbaum was Dežo’s very first great love. They were both in their twenties and lived in the age when the last hope of 1960s was dying. Eva kept the letters, understanding their literary potential, as if they were not written only to her, but to many other people. At the same time they carried her story of life, intimate and complicated as it was. That is why she put the letters in a safe and did not want to make it public. Anyway, she said to her friend, Peter Zajac: “When I die, do something with it. You will know what.”

Shortly before she died in 2014, Eva has given the letters to Peter and Peter gave it to us – the Artforum publishing house. That is the beginning of the story of the book. Putting sheets of paper into book is a long and difficult process.

It was not so difficult to make the decision whether to publish the book or not. We believe that it can be meaningful and interesting for other people as it is for us. Firstly, it is not only the story of love between Dežo and Eva, it is also the story of the age we all need to talk about. And Dežo wrote it in an interesting and beautiful way.

So we started to work. The first thing we needed to do was to rewrite the letters. This process was very long and difficult not only because the manuscripts had 500 pages, but also because the letters written on a typewriter on carbon paper were complemented with handwritten notes that sometimes were hard to decipher or include into the text. The next important step was to put the letters into the right order. Imagine a box full of letters Peter got… He rose to the occasion and did it.

A next important person came to set at the same time – the graphic designer Rado Bieleny. He started to think about how to create a book out of the letters that we – and especially you – would like. Knowing that the book would be pretty thick, we needed to call to the printery so they order enough paper.

Talking about the title of the book – we called it after Dežo Ursiny’s song called Apple Tree in Winter, which is probably the most famous one from the album Provisorium. This song’s been written about the same time as the letters to Eva.

And this is the part when our friends, fans of good books who like Dežo and his music, and all those people who like to learn about true stories from the past enter the story. All of these helped us to realize the project through the web www.startlab.sk/ursiny. The project costs a lot of money. We believe that this book deserves to be beautiful and carefully prepared and it has its own place on the book market.

Thanks to you, it could have become reality. The book beautiful inside and out is now being printed.

Thank you!