Christine Estima is an author, journalist and playwright. Her essays, short stories, creative non-fiction, reviews and other writings have appeared in many Canadian literary journals and newspapers. Estima is described in her first published novel as an Arab woman of mixed ethnicity (Lebanese, Syrian and Portuguese). She was born in Trois-Rivières, raised in Montreal and now lives in Toronto.
Fiction
Letters to Kafka
Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2025.
forthcoming September 2025
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
In 1919, Milena Jesenská, a clever and spirited twenty-three-year-old, is trapped in an unhappy marriage to literary critic Ernst Pollak. Since Pollak is unable to support the pair in Vienna’s post-war economy, Jesenská must supplement their income by working as a translator. Having previously met her compatriot Franz Kafka in the literary salons of Prague, she writes to him to ask for permission to translate his story The Stoker from German to Czech, becoming Kafka’s first translator. The letter launches an intense and increasingly passionate correspondence. Jesenská is captivated by Kafka’s energy, intensity, and burning ambition to write. Kafka is fascinated by Jesenská’s wit, rebellious spirit, and intelligence.
Jesenská and Kafka meet twice for lovers’ trysts, but can such an intense connection endure beyond a fleeting affair? In her remarkable debut novel, Christine Estima weaves little-known facts and fiction into a rich tapestry, powerfully portraying the struggles of a woman forced to choose between the roles of wife, lover, and intellectual.
Fiction
The Syrian Ladies Benevolent Society
Toronto: Astoria/House of Anansi Press, 2023.
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
With imaginative aplomb and abiding passion, The Syrian Ladies Benevolent Society masterfully traces the deep roots of the Arab immigrant experience. These unforgettable interlocking stories follow an Arab family as they flee the Middle East in the nineteenth century, settle in Montreal in the twentieth, and face the collision between tradition and modernity in the twenty-first. This family includes trailblazing Lebanese freedom fighters, undercover operatives in World War II, and brave Syrian refugees trying to find their place in Canadian society.
The line of daring women culminates in Azurée, a young Arab woman living in the echoes of her ancestors’ voices.
Anthology
Tok. Book 1
Estima, Christine. “Nylon-encased Flesh.” In Tok. Book 1, edited by Helen Walsh. Toronto: Zephyr Press, 2006, 131-142.