Anne Frank The Book, The Life, The Afterlife [Paperback]

“A definitive, deeply moving inquiry into the life of the young, imperiled artist, and a masterful exegesis ofDiary of a Young Girl…Extraordinary testimony to the power of literature and compassion” –Booklist(starred review)

InAnne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife, Francine Prose, author ofReading Like a Writer, deftly parses the artistry, ambition, and enduring influence of Anne Frank’s beloved classic,The Diary of a Young Girl. Approved by both the Anne Frank House Foundation in Amsterdam and the Anne Frank-Fonds in Basel, run by the Frank family, this work of literary criticism unravels the complex, fascinating story of the diary and effectively makes the case for it being a work of art from a precociously gifted writer.

In June 1942, Anne Frank received a red-and-white-checked diary for her thirteenth birthday, just weeks before she and her family went into hiding in an Amsterdam attic to escape the Nazis. For two years, with ever-increasing maturity, Anne crafted a memoir that has become one of the most compelling documents of modern history. But Anne Frank's diary, argues Francine Prose, is as much a work of art as it is a historical record. Through close reading, she marvels at the teenage Frank's skillfully natural narrative voice, at her finely tuned dialogue and ability to turn living people into characters.

Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlifetells the extraordinary story of the book that became a force in the world. Along the way, Prose definitively establishes that Anne Frank was not an accidental author or a casual teenage chronicler but a writer of prodigious talent and ambition.

Prose is clear-headed, tough, and fair, and her book, though in places immensely sad, is superb. It should be cherished alongside the masterpiece that inspired it.Prose admirably recreates the events in the attic over the yearsno small feat[with] alll3,