Mirjam Pressler - The story of Anne Frank

Tens of millions of people have read the diaries of Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl who wrote her secret diary as she hid from the Nazis with her family in the complicated and yet somehow deceptively simple landscape that lay hidden behind the sealed-up walls of an office block in Amsterdam.

In The Story of Anne Frank Mirjam Pressler (editor of the definitive edition of Anne Frank: The Diary of Young Girl) steps beyond Anne's own words and takes a tender yet unsentimental look at the canvas Anne used to paint the lasting images that filled her world during the last two years of her tragically short life.

By gently probing behind the familiar words, Pressler initiates a state of true understanding of the relationships and bonds that were formed in the "Secret Annexe" by introducing new insights into Anne's early life, her relationships with family and friends and the raw emotions that were magnified by living in such a tiny space in such horrendous circumstances. The Story of Anne Frank is not a biography as such, more a companion volume to enhance the understanding of the devastating circumstances which forced a teenage girl on the brink of womanhood to put pen to paper, ultimately leading the rest of the world towards a better understanding of the true human cost of the Holocaust.

When Anne wrote, aged just 14: " I want to go on living after my death" she could never have imagined that her wish would so quickly be granted. Pressler's delicate scrutiny of the real Anne and the people who surrounded her in her last years simply and poignantly brings a new depth to a story that everyone should be forced to read. --Susan Harrison