Summary
Christine Estima: Letters to Kafka
A skilfully designed and passionately written novel. A comprehensive, tragic love and feminist narrative about Milena Jesenska and her stormy love affair with Franz Kafka. In 1919, Milena Jesenska, a bright and lively twenty-three-year-old, was trapped in an unhappy marriage with literary critic Ernst Polak. Since Polak is unable to support the family, Milena has to contribute to the household budget by working as a translator. Before that, she met her compatriot Franz Kafka in the Prague literary salons, and now she is writing to him asking for permission to translate his story Lozač from German into Czech, thus becoming Kafka's first translator. That letter starts an intense and increasingly passionate correspondence. Milena is enchanted by Kafka's energy, determination and burning ambition to write. Kafka, on the other hand, is fascinated by Milena's wit, rebellious spirit and intelligence. Milena and Kafka meet twice on dates, but can such a strong relationship last longer than a fleeting affair? In her remarkable novel, Christine Estima weaves little-known fact and fiction into a rich tapestry, powerfully portraying the struggle of a woman forced to choose between the roles of wife, lover and intellectual.
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