The end of the war and the downfall of the Habsburg monarchy also marks a significant turning point for the tuberculosis-stricken Kafka: he is now a citizen of Czechoslovakia and, as a German-speaking Jew, finds himself in a precarious situation. Even the passionate correspondence with Milena Pollak, née Jesenská - the focus of this volume - is overshadowed by national conflicts. It is only after the failure of this perhaps most intense relationship of his life that Kafka returns to literature. Volume 4 of the letter edition contains 306 annotated letters by Kafka, seven of which are published for the first time, along with 48 letters addressed to him. Postcards are reproduced as illustrations. As part of the Critical Edition, a roughly 200-page apparatus provides a detailed account of the transmission of each letter and addresses challenging dating issues.