Letters to Felice, by Franz Kafka, trans. James Stern and Elisabeth Duckworth (Vintage, £12.99 in UK)

Felice Bauer had a long and emotional but, in the end, sad relationship with Kafka between 1912 and 1917 - a period, for him, of intense literary and intellectual activity. They were twice engaged, but marriage to a consumptive (as Kafka already was) was not an attractive option, and his morbidly scrupulous, self-analytical temperament cannot have been easy for a healthy, vigorous young woman. In spite of Kafka's intellectual brilliance, his letters sometimes make painful reading because of his over-intense nature and sedentary way of life - during much of this period, he lived with his parents in Prague. Felice later married a German businessman, by whom she had two children, and died in the US in 1960. Vintage has also reissued The Complete Novels of Franz Kafka (£9.99 in UK) and The Trial, The Castle, and Metamorphosis and Other Stories in separate volumes at £6.99 each (in UK).