The Many Lives of Anne Frank

This trenchant study from literary critic Franklin (A Thousand Darknesses) chronicles the brief life of Anne Frank (1929–1945) and traces the complex ways in which her story continues to reverberate. The biographical first section captures the claustrophobia of Frank’s two years in the secret annex of her father’s former workplace and provides a wrenching account of the months leading up to her death from typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Franklin then turns her attention to Otto Frank’s publication of his daughter’s diary in 1947 and how it’s been used and misused in the decades since. Some critics accuse the diary’s adaptations of downplaying Frank’s Judaism, Franklin writes, noting that the popular 1955 play The Diary of Anne Frank altered a Frank quote about the persecution of Jewish people to instead emphasize how, in the playwrights’ words, “there’ve always been people that’ve had to [suffer].” Elsewhere, Franklin discusses how Diary of a Young Girl inspired South African anti-apartheid activists in the 1980s, and how American conservatives have sought to ban the book over passages in which Frank reflects on her sexuality. The biography succeeds in “restoring [Frank] as a human being rather than an icon,” and Franklin’s probing examination of the eventful afterlife of Frank’s diary testifies to how the lessons of the Holocaust continue to be litigated. This is an essential look at the diarist’s legacy. Photos. Agent: Sarah Burnes, Gernert Co. (Jan.)