Kafka, Love and Courage : The Life of Milena Jesenska

Milena Jesenska is best known as the recipient of Franz Kafka's Letters to Milena. They met when Milena approached Kafka, asking for permission to translate his work, and the two were soon engaged in an intense, deeply intimate and revelatory correspondence. Kafka wrote to Milena of his illness, his sleeplessness, his self-doubt. Milena wrote of her failing marriage and her frustration with Vienna. Milena was, however, more than Kafka's correspondent. Charismatic, courageous, and creative, she moved among the literary circles of Prague and Vienna that included Max Brod and Hermann Broch. As a journalist she left a vivid record of the times, writing on diverse subjects, from the latest fashions to contemporary politics and, in time, the Munich crisis and Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia. When the Second World War started, she was part of the underground resistance until her arrest and detention in Ravensbruck concentration camp.Drawing on Milena's journalism, as well as unpublished letters and other archival material from Prague, Mary Hockaday casts Milena's life against the backdrop of cosmopolitan Prague before it vanished behind the Iron Curtain. In this richly detailed biography, Milena emerges as a fascinating and complex woman of enormous vitality and passion.