Margaret Buber-Neumann, a Prussian writer and journalist and Milena Jesenska, a Czech journalist and who was for two years Franz Kafka's lover, met in Ravensbruech concentration camp in 1940 and survived together for four terrible years. Although in part a biography of Milena, this book is in far larger part about a remarkable pact: if both survived the camp, the two would write a book together; if only one made it, she would tell their story. Three months before D Day, Milena Jesenska died. Thus it fell to Margarete Buber-Neumann to recount those years. This book was a best-seller in France and was awarded a prize for the best foreign book of the year.