Kafka, Love and Courage - The Life of Milena Jesenska (Hardcover, 1st American ed)


Milena Jesenska is best known as the recipient of Kafka's Letters to Milena. This compelling biography fleshes out Kafka's muse, a radical-thinking, thoroughly independent woman and journalist in her own right who lived at the center of cosmopolitan Prague before the war. Always a breaker of conventions, she advocated free love, simple fashions and female independence. She experimented with Bohemianism, cafe society, sex and drugs, had passionate friendships with other women and shoplifted occasionally. She also translated Gorky, Stendahl, Flaubert, Stevenson - and Kafka. The two met when Milena approached Kafka, asking for permission to translate his work, and the two were soon engaged in a deeply intimate correspondence. As a journalist, Milena left a vivid record of the times, writing on diverse subjects, from the latest fashions, modern architecture and interior design to contemporary politics and, in time, the Munich crisis and Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia. When the Second World War broke out, she was part of the underground resistance until her arrest and detention in Ravensbruck concentration camp. Drawing on unpublished letters and other archival material from Prague and on Milena's own journalism, Mary Hockaday casts Milena's life against the backdrop of the intellectual circles of pre-war Prague. Milena emerges as a real woman who lived both heroically and imperfectly in complex times, a fascinating woman of enormous vitality and passion.

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Product Description

Milena Jesenska is best known as the recipient of Kafka's Letters to Milena. This compelling biography fleshes out Kafka's muse, a radical-thinking, thoroughly independent woman and journalist in her own right who lived at the center of cosmopolitan Prague before the war. Always a breaker of conventions, she advocated free love, simple fashions and female independence. She experimented with Bohemianism, cafe society, sex and drugs, had passionate friendships with other women and shoplifted occasionally. She also translated Gorky, Stendahl, Flaubert, Stevenson - and Kafka. The two met when Milena approached Kafka, asking for permission to translate his work, and the two were soon engaged in a deeply intimate correspondence. As a journalist, Milena left a vivid record of the times, writing on diverse subjects, from the latest fashions, modern architecture and interior design to contemporary politics and, in time, the Munich crisis and Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia. When the Second World War broke out, she was part of the underground resistance until her arrest and detention in Ravensbruck concentration camp. Drawing on unpublished letters and other archival material from Prague and on Milena's own journalism, Mary Hockaday casts Milena's life against the backdrop of the intellectual circles of pre-war Prague. Milena emerges as a real woman who lived both heroically and imperfectly in complex times, a fascinating woman of enormous vitality and passion.

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Product Details

General

Imprint

Abrams Press

Country of origin

United States

Release date

March 1997

Availability

Supplier out of stock. If you add this item to your wish list we will let you know when it becomes available.

Authors

Dimensions

235 x 159 x 27mm (L x W x T)

Format

Hardcover - Sewn / Cloth over boards / With dust jacket

Pages

272

Edition

1st American ed

ISBN-13

978-0-87951-751-9

Barcode

9780879517519

Categories

LSN

0-87951-751-4



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