The Many Lives of Anne Frank by Ruth Franklin

More than a million people every year wait in long lines to see the Anne Frank House, the secret hiding place of Anne and her family in Amsterdam 1942-1944. What is it about this story that retains its power over visitors from every part of the globe? In her riveting new book, Ruth Franklin looks behind the icon Anne has become, restoring humanity to a brilliant young girl who once lived, breathed, and wrote. Franklin, author of Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (winner of the NBCC Award for Biography), recreates Anne’s world, exploring the day-to-day perils of the Holocaust for Jews in the Netherlands and piecing together her last year from eyewitness accounts. Franklin also tells the story of the diary — its multiple drafts, its discovery, its reception, and its message for today’s world. “A moving, clear-eyed tribute. A triumph,” Heather Clark, author of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath. Franklin will appear in conversation with the best-selling novelist Meg Wolitzer, author of The Wife and The Ten-Year Nap, among other books.

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