Letters to Milena

Letters to Milena captures the intimate and complex relationship between Franz Kafka and Milena Jesenská, a Czech journalist and translator. Their correspondence began in 1920, when Milena undertook the translation of Kafka’s early short prose into Czech. What started as a literary connection quickly deepened into a powerful emotional bond.

Kafka’s feelings for Milena were so profound that he entrusted her with his personal diaries, opening up his innermost thoughts, anxieties, and confessions. While Milena’s vivid energy and “genius for living” at times seemed to revive Kafka’s spirit, the emotional intensity of their relationship also left him deeply drained.

Their connection lasted a little over two years, ending before Kafka’s death in 1924 at a sanatorium near Vienna. Milena herself would die two decades later in 1944, a victim of the Nazi regime. What remains is this moving collection of letters — a testament to their bond and an enduring record of Kafka’s inner life, vulnerability, and longing.