I can't resist a book about Kafka and his complicated, tragic life and this was exactly that. It gave an interesting peek into the brief affair and extensive letter correspondance between Franz Kafka and his married translator Milena Jesenka. At times I found the writing a little overwrought but it still conjured a very vivid picture of the artistic scene in 1920's Vienna and the tangled relationship Milena had with her husband and with Kafka. Reading this definitely convinced me that I need to read Letters to Milena asap.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher (House of Annasi Press) for the ARC! Review is my own.

"Now that I'm grown I want to threaten people with my wit. I want to charm people with my charisma. I want to be otherworldly. I want to scorch every heart and engulf every spirit I encounter. I want to be loved and helplessly adored for the power of my thoughts."

This book has me begging for the world to give a second chance to a man and woman who died over 80-100 years ago!

Vienna/Europe during this time (rise of Vienna Secession - WWII) is something I find incredibly interesting and was my initial reason for requesting the book. I did not know much about Franz and Milena, only bits of his letters, so the name dropping of prominent figures in the beginning got me hooked (Klimt, Schiele, Sinclair).

The author writes so beautifully. Poetic prose that really immersed the reader in Vienna and Prague. I haven’t been to either city since 2019 but the way she wrote it was correct, it felt ephemeral yet giant. Like you are constantly retracing someone else's footsteps.

Mostly though I think the author did a phenomenal job of portraying the heartbreaking love between Franz and Milena. Weaving in the real writings with ones imagined - knowing they couldn’t and wouldn’t be together but desperate for a taste of one another - it felt real. After getting to know Milena I think that Estima probably got as close as we could ever picture someone getting after Kafka himself.

‘Affair’ seems so meek and dirty and distasteful to describe these two. If a man wrote to me ‘I need all the time I have and a thousand times more than all the time I have and most of all I’d like to have all the time there is just for you, for thinking about you, for breathing you in” and then history called it a mere affair I’d come back and HAUNT them. I think the author hit this point that we can call it brief but to call it weak is a disservice.

Milena had such a sad life (hard family life, bad marriages, loss, arrests/psych holds, being captured by nazis), but Estima never made it seem like Milena saw it that way. In those hardships, she made the her life beautiful in ways that mattered to her. She read and wrote, took risks, helped people escape the nazis. An incredibly interesting, intellectual woman until the end. Almost too cool for Franz, which I think he knew too.

I also didn’t know that the “If BLANK has 100 fans i am one of them, if they have one its me, if they have none then im dead” trend came from KAFKA TO MILENA!!!

Milena, if a million loved you, I am one of them, and if one loved you, it was me, if no one loved you then know that I am dead. - FK

Anyway I will be reading ‘Letters to Milena’ to further hurt myself.

Before reading this interesting novel I had to do some research on Milena Jesenska because I had no idea who she was. In my findings. I discovered that she was a journalist in Czechoslovakia best known for exchanging passionate letters with Franz Kafka. She also was a resistance fighter during the second world war which eventually lead to her downfall. I will admit this ended up being a history lesson for me but overall I was enjoyed with my findings and with the story itself. I have read novels before of women working the resistance but they weren't instense as this one. I will keep this review short as I don't wish to reveal too much
The novel begina in 1919 with Milena being married to a man she literally depises. She takes on a job translating and from thers takes up correspondence with Franz Kafka. The two manage to meet up various times for lovers trysts but nothing ever develops more between them. Eventually she goes through life marrying several more times. At the start of the second world war she is doing everything in her power to make things better but like anyone who gets caught things don't go well as planned.
I received an arc copy from Netgalley and all opinions are of my own.