Letters to Milena

Letters to Milena is a collection of correspondence between Franz Kafka and Milena Jesenská, a Czech journalist and translator who became one of the most important people in his later life. Written during the years of their intense and often painful relationship, the letters move between tenderness, longing, self-scrutiny and the struggle of a writer confronting his own fears about love, illness and independence. Kafka's private voice here is candid and searching, offering a window onto the man behind works such as The Trial and The Castle.

The book is best suited to readers who already know Kafka and want to see him outside his fiction, as well as those interested in the lives of early twentieth-century European writers. Jesenská emerges as a sharp and independent figure in her own right, and the exchange is as much about two people trying to understand one another as it is about literature.

Readers drawn to epistolary writing, literary biography or the quieter, more intimate side of modern classics will find much to reflect on. The letters reward slow reading, and they are equally rewarding for anyone curious about how a great novelist thought about himself when he was not writing for publication.