RAVENSBRÜCK – RAVENSBRÜCK

BY SEM-SANDBERG, STEVE

Milena Jesenská (1896-1944) is first and foremost known as a friend and translator of Franz Kafka. The letters she inspired him to write, Letters to Milena, are among the most beautiful and inspiring love letters in world literature. Not only a passionate woman, she was also a dedicated journalist whose work encompassed the birth of her own Czechoslovak nation as well as the persecutions and atrocities of the Nazis. Steve Sem-Sandbergs novel chronicles the dramatic life and times of Milena Jesenská, from her early years as a spirited teenager in fin-de-siècle Prague, through her candid relationship with Kafka to her final years in the concentration camp of Ravensbrück where she died, a living inspiration to the other prisoners who were to remember her for a long time afterwards.

Ravensbrück was nominated for the August Prize in 2003 and the Nordic Council’s Prize in 2004.