Anne Frank received a diary for her thirteenth birthday in June 1942, weeks before her family went into hiding to escape the persecution of Jews in German-occupied Amsterdam. For more than two years, eight people lived in concealed rooms behind her father Otto's business premises, helped by a small group of employees who brought food and news.
Writing her entries as letters to an imaginary friend she called Kitty, Anne describes cramped quarters, quarrels with her mother and with the dentist who shared her room, the fear of discovery at every noise, and the war heard through the radio. She also writes about growing up: her changing body, her friendship with Peter van Pels, her religious and moral questions, and her ambition to become a writer. In 1944 she began revising the diary herself after hearing a radio appeal to preserve wartime records.
Her father, the only one of the eight to survive the camps, published the diary in Dutch in 1947. Translated into some seventy languages, it is among the most widely read books in the world and a central text for teaching about the Holocaust.
Book details
| Author | Anne Frank |
|---|---|
| First published | 1947 |
| Original language | Dutch |
| Translated by | B. M. Mooyaart-Doubleday |
| Genre | Memoir |
| Type | Non-fiction |
| Pages (approx.) | 283 |
| Setting | The Secret Annex, Amsterdam, 1942-1944 |
Themes
- Holocaust
- Adolescence
- Confinement
- Hope
- Identity
Who should read it
Students and adults alike who want to understand the Holocaust through the voice of one vivid, thoughtful teenager.
If you liked this, try
- Man's Search for Meaning
- Night
- The Book Thief