Letters to Kafka

Estima’s inspired if clunky latest (after the story collection The Syrian Ladies Benevolent Society) explores a Czech woman’s long-ago romance with novelist Franz Kafka. The story takes the form of an interrogation of Milena Jesenská by SS officer Reinhard Heydrich in a Prague jail in 1939, where she’s being held by the Nazis for her role in smuggling Czech Jews into Poland, and for having a Jewish husband. Milena begins by recounting her unhappy marriage to banker Ernst Pollak, who has a mistress on the side. She’s enchanted by Kafka when she meets him in a Prague café during a visit to the city, and she writes to him from Vienna, offering to translate his short story “The Stoker.” Kafka agrees and the pair arrange to meet in Vienna for a four-day tryst. While some of the writing is stilted (“Milena’s heartbeat was spilled ink”) and the novel is a touch too long, the interviews with Heydrich culminate with poignant revelations about the fate of Kafka’s family during WWII and intriguing suggestions about Milena’s connection to his unfinished novel The Castle. Kafka devotees ought to take a look. (Sept.)