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Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife (2009)

by Francine Prose(Favorite Author)

4 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

006143079X (ISBN13: 9780061430794)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

HarperTorch

review 1: For all the words that have been spent on Anne Frank and her iconic diary in the decades since the Holocaust, only a few have addressed Anne the Writer, and this may the first time there have been enough to make up a book. Much has been written about Anne the Symbol and, later, Anne the Person; her role as a writer has almost been irrelevant to our understanding of the Diary so far. Prose makes us understand that the Diary as we know it isn't actually a diary, but the product of Anne's skillful revisions toward crafting a memoir, and the melding of the two versions her father did after the war, when he was trying to get it published. (In the Critical Edition of the diary, you can see all three versions laid out side-by-side.) Prose also tackles the life of the Diary as we ... moreknow it - Anne's afterlife - how this iconic book got rejected several major publishing houses, how Holocaust deniers have warped it to advance hateful agendas, the heated debate over its role as one of the most well-known symbols of the Holocaust, and the adaptations of the Diary for Broadway and Hollywood that whitewashed the anti-Semitism out of her suffering and dumbed her down for the masses - which goes a long way toward explaining why Prose's book has been such a long time coming.
review 2: This book is amazing. Francine Prose conducts a close reading of the diary, and tells the story of Anne as a writer, who consciously rewrote her entire diary in the months before her capture with the goal of having it published. The sections on the diary's afterlife, focusing on its commercialization, and the "Americanization" of Anne Frank, are also wonderful. So good, full of so many unexpected and fascinating details about a really complicated and fiercely intelligent adolescent who is often, unfortunately, remembered for a decontextualized line about the goodness in everyone or by her portrayals on the stage and in film. less

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