#84 in Classics
The Diary of a Young Girl
- 242
- Pages
- about 4.5 h
- Reading time
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Editor’s note Anne Frank kept the diary from June 1942, when she turned thirteen and her family went into hiding in the annex behind her father’s office in Amsterdam, until 1 August 1944, three days before the arrest. She died in Bergen-Belsen in early 1945; her father Otto, the only one of the eight in hiding to survive, published it in 1947. Anne had herself begun rewriting it for publication in 1944, so what we read is partly her own edited book. The Definitive Edition of 1995 restored the passages Otto had cut. Translated into more than seventy languages; in German it is Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank, and in Germany it is read in nearly every school.
About the book
In 1942, with Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, they and another family lived cloistered in the “Secret Annex” of an old office building. Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever-present threat of discovery and death. In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during this period. By turns thoughtful, moving, and amusing, her account offers a fascinating commentary on human courage and frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was tragically cut short.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.0 across 1,993 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 93% of the weight and the score stays at 8.0 — the Classics average of 7.7 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hardcover | 8.0 | 2K | 100% |
Reader voices
The most-liked reviews on Hardcover (credited to their authors).
“Great start and a great end. Lots of surprises in the diary. Still, there was a lot of repeated content and a significant amount of trivialities. Maybe all diaries are like this. Overall, I'm afraid I wouldn't recommend the book. In fact, I wonder if…”
“This book as probably done more to preserve the memory of what it was like to be hunted like an animal in Nazi Germany than any other book. Because it's accessible to kids, it gives us that first taste that other people's lives aren't so…”
Frequently asked
How long is The Diary of a Young Girl?
It has 242 pages — shorter than 58% of the ranked books in Classics.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Classics — and a score of 8.0, the closest to this book.
