Drawing on interviews with Frank's surviving family and friends and previously unavailable correspondence and documents, the author casts new light on Frank's relationship with her... more
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Frank's famous diary within a larger historical and biographical context--more than half of it covers the years before the Franks went into hiding. Equally important is her discovery of the existence of five pages Otto Frank removed from his daughter's original diary and entrusted shortly before his death to Cor Sujik, International Director of New York's Anne Frank Centre. Sujik showed these pages to Muller, who accurately notes in the biography that they "enhance our understanding of the diary's author." Until now, readers have known the eight people sequestered in the secret annexe through Anne's eyes only. Muller reveals everyone's correct names (they were changed for the diary's publication) and tactfully corrects a teenager's skewed perceptions when necessary, always reminding us of the claustrophobic closeness and material deprivation that sometimes fuelled Anne's uncharitable comments about, for example, the middle-aged dentist with whom she was forced to share a room. Muller also plausibly identifies the Dutch informant who betrayed the secret annexe's inhabitants to the Gestapo. Horror suffuses Muller's grim recap of the Franks' ordeal at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, though there is some comfort in survivors' reports that Anne, her mother and her older sister formed "an inseparable trio," all former quarrels forgotten in their fierce struggle to save each other. They failed and Muller does not gloss over that tragedy. But she reminds us that: "In the end, the Nazi terror could not silence Anne's voice, which still rings out for all of us."
Advantages: Compelling story, educational, well written Disadvantages: None that I found
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I read Anne Frank's Diary as a teenager, when I was around the same age as she was when she wrote it. Now my interest in her has been reawakened. This time, my daughter is around the age Anne was when she wrote her diary in the Secret Annex in Amsterdam, where she remained hidden for just over two years. The reason for my latest interest in Anne Frank - and three of my children are also fascinated by her life - is the recently televised two-part ... ...on a 1998 book called Anne Frank - The Biography written by Melissa Muller. I ordered the book from the library and have just finished reading the 300 pages or so. I feel this biography is probably the best researched and most historically accurate story of Anne's short life.
I always feel sceptical of biographies. They often seem to throw up more questions than answers and often paint such an incomplete or obsequious picture, that their value is ...
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Drawing on interviews with Frank's surviving family and friends and previously unavailable correspondence and documents, the author casts new light on Frank's relationship with her mother and other issues.
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Listed on Ciao since : 10/06/2003
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