In his preface to Franz Kafka’s Letters to Milena, published in 1952, Willy Haas describes Milena Jesenska as “…passionate, intrepid, cool and intelligent in her decisions, but reckless in the choice of means when her passion was involved…” That short character sketch alone is enough to convince any reader that Milena Jesenska has the qualities of a protagonist, even if they didn’t know of her real-life accomplishments as a translator, writer, editor and member of the resistance movement fighting against the Nazis during their occupation of Czechoslovakia.
Putting Milena Jesenska front and centre is exactly what Christine Estima has done with her powerful debut novel Letters to Kafka. With the historical knowledge and skill that were on display in her story collection The Syrian Ladies Benevolent Society, Estima takes readers on a journey to central Europe in the 20s and 30s, to the cobblestone streets, cafés and boudoirs inhabited by the criminally-underappreciated Jesenska and the legendary Franz Kafka. In doing so, politics and history come alive with a literary flourish.
The novel opens in Prague, 1939, where we see Milena has been detained by Nazis who begin interrogating her. This is told to us in the third person, and we watch as though through a two-way mirror, as Milena stands strong in the face of insults, threats and violence. Her interrogator, rather than asking her many questions about the operations of the resistance, their tactics and secrets, fixates on her womanhood, that she chose to marry a Jew (Ernst Pollak) and why she has rejected the life of a house frau.
In Kafka’s Letters to Milena, we are never given her replies. Estima corrects that with this novel, imagining Jesenska’s responses and giving us the lunges, feints, parries and ripostes of a courtship that took place primarily in written form.
The following chapter takes readers back to 1918, to the post-Great War tumult. Told in the first person, what we see is not Hemingway’s post-war Paris or Fitzgerald’s jazz age. We get a world that has been turned upside down, where proud, wealthy families have been reduced to hardship. Yet in that chaos there is opportunity for someone brave enough to push for change. Jesenska has not been dealt a great hand, but with her education and skillset, not to mention her guts and fortitude, she tries to make something more of her life, challenging patriarchal norms and not settling.
In Kafka’s Letters to Milena, we are never given her replies. Estima corrects that with this novel, imagining Jesenska’s responses and giving us the lunges, feints, parries and ripostes of a courtship that took place primarily in written form. This epistolary element adds yet another narrative layer to this literary tiramisu, along with both the first- and third- person narration. For readers unfamiliar with Kafka, central Europe in the 20s or Czechoslovakia under the Nazis, Estima’s approach makes the historical details easy to digest.
Letters to Kafka deals with difficult subject matter and the ugliness that men subject women to. Milena goes from facing the caprices of Depression Era patriarchy to the even-more-regressive patriarchy of the National Socialist movement. But far from being a novel of darkness and hopelessness, this book crackles with wit. Without being written in the slow, cumbersome style found in much of the fiction of the early twentieth century, Letters to Kafka maintains a historic authenticity. The humour and voice remain true to the period, and Estima takes full advantage of the context to create drama and tension among readers with contemporary sensibilities. Both a deeply intimate story and one that rides on the tide of historical turning points, Letters to Kafka is a beautifully rendered novel. Estima creates characters with such dimension that, among the cinematic backdrop she has constructed with precise prose, no previous knowledge of Franz Kafka or Milena Jesenska is required. Just sit back and let this book take you on a journey.
CHRISTINE ESTIMA is an Arab woman of mixed ethnicity (Lebanese, Syrian, and Portuguese) and the author of the short story collection The Syrian Ladies Benevolent Society, which the CBC called one of the Best Fiction Books of 2023. She has written for The New York Times, The Walrus, VICE, The Globe and Mail, Chatelaine, Maisonneuve, the Toronto Star, and the CBC. Her story “Your Hands Are Blessed” was included in Best Canadian Stories 2023. She was a finalist for the 2023 Lee Smith Novel Prize and was shortlisted for the 2018 Allan Slaight Prize for Journalism. Christine has a master’s degree in interdisciplinary studies from York University and lives in Toronto.
Publisher: House Of Anansi (September 9, 2025)
Paperback: 8″ x 5″ | 384 pp
ISBN: 9781487013318
Jeff Dupuis is a writer and editor living in Toronto. He is the author of The Creature X Mystery novels and numerous short stories, which have been published in The Ex-Puritan and The Temz Review among others. Jeff is the editor, alongside A.G. Pasquella, of the anthology Devouring Tomorrow: Fiction from the Future of Food, which will be published in 2025 by Dundurn Press.
