Kafka's Milena
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good to fair. Jacket: No dust jacket. Page Condition: Good - possible tanning. Markings: possible previous owner inscription.
Few figures in literary history are as haunting as Milena Jesenská — the brilliant, audacious Czech journalist who captivated Franz Kafka and left an indelible mark on the 20th century's most enigmatic writer. Kafka's Milena, written by Milena's own daughter Jana Černá, presents an intimate and emotionally charged portrait of a woman who defied the boundaries of her era, chronicling her turbulent life from her passionate correspondence with Kafka to her courageous resistance against Nazi occupation. Translated from the Czech by A. G. Brain and introduced by George Gibian, who also translates selections of Milena's own work, this biography offers readers rare access to a perspective no other account can provide. Černá writes with raw tenderness and unflinching honesty, unraveling the complexity of a mother she both admired and struggled to understand — a woman who was simultaneously a muse, a rebel, and a martyr. The book illuminates the cultural and political turbulence of interwar Prague, situating Milena within the broader currents of Central European modernism and antifascist resistance. For anyone drawn to Kafka's letters or the lost world of Bohemian intellectual life, this memoir raises a question that lingers long after the final page: how do we reckon with a life that was both destroyed and immortalised by history?
Author: Jana Černá
Format: Hardback
Genre: Biography
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good to fair. Jacket: No dust jacket. Page Condition: Good - possible tanning. Markings: possible previous owner inscription.
Few figures in literary history are as haunting as Milena Jesenská — the brilliant, audacious Czech journalist who captivated Franz Kafka and left an indelible mark on the 20th century's most enigmatic writer. Kafka's Milena, written by Milena's own daughter Jana Černá, presents an intimate and emotionally charged portrait of a woman who defied the boundaries of her era, chronicling her turbulent life from her passionate correspondence with Kafka to her courageous resistance against Nazi occupation. Translated from the Czech by A. G. Brain and introduced by George Gibian, who also translates selections of Milena's own work, this biography offers readers rare access to a perspective no other account can provide. Černá writes with raw tenderness and unflinching honesty, unraveling the complexity of a mother she both admired and struggled to understand — a woman who was simultaneously a muse, a rebel, and a martyr. The book illuminates the cultural and political turbulence of interwar Prague, situating Milena within the broader currents of Central European modernism and antifascist resistance. For anyone drawn to Kafka's letters or the lost world of Bohemian intellectual life, this memoir raises a question that lingers long after the final page: how do we reckon with a life that was both destroyed and immortalised by history?