Letters to Milena

"The voice of Kafka in Letters to Milena is more personal, more pure, and more painful than in his fiction: a testimony to human existence and to our eternal wait for the impossible. A marvellous new edition of a classic text."  —  Jan Kott

“An extraordinary document—touching, horrifying, brilliant, sickly, heartbreaking, and infinitely convoluted... It reveals him most clearly (which is relative, and Kafka remains mystifying enough), and it is — aside from the beauty of the letters themselves — the most significant key we have for a reading of the author’s novels and short stories.”  —  The New York Times

FRANZ KAFKA was born in 1883 in Prague, where he lived most of his life. He published only a few short stories, including “The Metamorphosis,” “The Judgment,” and “The Stoker.” He died in 1924, before completing any of his full-length novels. At the end of his life, Kafka asked his lifelong friend and literary executor Max Brod to burn all his unpublished work. Brod overrode those wishes.