Letters to Milena
- Publisher : Penguin Random House
- Publishing year : December 2018
- Binding : Paperback
- ISBN : 9781784874001
- Imprint : Vintage
- Age Group : Adult
- Language : English
- Number of Pages : 272 Pages
Franz Kafka's letters to his one-time muse, Milena Jesenska - an intimate window into the desires and hopes of the twent ...
Franz Kafka's letters to his one-time muse, Milena Jesenska - an intimate window into the desires and hopes of the twentieth-century's most prophetic and important writer
Kafka first made the acquaintance of Milena Jesenska in 1920 when she was translating his early short prose into Czech, and their relationship quickly developed into a deep attachment. Such was his feeling for her that Kafka showed her his diaries and, in doing so, laid bare his heart and his conscience. While at times Milena's 'genius for living' gave Kafka new life, it ultimately exhausted him, and their relationship was to last little over two years. In 1924 Kafka died in a sanatorium near Vienna, and Milena died in 1944 at the hands of the Nazis, leaving these letters as a moving record of their relationship.
Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924) is a Jewish Czechoslovakian who wrote in German, and who ranks among the twentieth-century's most acclaimed writers. His works evoke anxiety, alienation and uncertainty in a world that is largely unfeeling and unfamiliar. He bequeathed his main body of work to long-time friend Max Brod, asking for it to be burned unread. Brod disobeyed Kafka's, whose work is now considered among the most original in Western literature.
