Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife

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 from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic. For two years, with ever-increasing maturity, Anne crafted a memoir that has become one of the most compelling, intimate, and important documents of modern history - grappling with the unfolding events of World War II, until the hidden attic was raided in August, 1944. But the diary of Anne Frank, argues Francine Prose, is as much a work of art as an historical record. Through close reading, she marvels at the teenaged Frank's skillfully natural narrative voice, at her finely tuned dialogue and ability to turn living people into characters. And Prose addresses what few of the diary's millions of readers may know: this book is a deliberate work of art. During her last months in hiding, Anne Frank furiously revised and edited her work, crafting a piece of literature that she hoped would be read by the public after the war. Read it has been. Few books have been as influential for so long, and Prose thoroughly investigates the diary's unique afterlife: the obstacles and criticism Otto Frank faced in publishing his daughter's words; the controversy surrounding the diary's "Broadway" and film adaptations, and the 1950's social mores that reduced it to a tale of adolescent angst and love; the claims of conspiracy theorists who have cried fraud, and the scientific analysis that proved them wrong. Finally, having assigned the book to her own students, Prose considers the rewards and challenges of teaching one of the world's most read, and banned, books.