Letters to Milena

A reissue of the passionate correspondence between one of the greatest twentieth-century literary figures and the woman whom he described as “a living fire, such as I have never seen.”

As Kafka’s Czech translator, Milena Jesenská was unequaled in her ability to recognize his complex genius and his even more complex character. What began essentially as a business correspondence between a charismatic woman of twenty-three and the thirty-six-year-old author becomes a correspondence of love, in which Kafka reveals his ultimate self.