Anne Frank: The Biography: Updated and Expanded with New Material - Softcover

Müller, Melissa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1250050154 ISBN 13: 9781250050151

Publisher: Picador, 2014

Synopsis

UPDATED AND FILLED WITH STRIKING NEW REVELATIONS, THE BESTSELLING, "SUPERB" BIOGRAPHY THAT "HONORS IN FULL A LIFE WE THOUGHT WE KNEW" (NEWSWEEK)

Praised as "remarkable," "meticulous," and "long overdue," Anne Frank: The Biography, originally published in 1998, still stands as the definitive account of the girl who has become "the human face of the Holocaust." Full of revelations, Müller's richly textured narrative returned Anne Frank to history, portraying the flesh-and-blood girl unsentimentalized and so all the more affecting.

Now, sixteen years after the book first appeared, much new information has come to light: letters sent by Otto Frank to relatives in America as he sought to emigrate with his family, the identity of other suspects involved in the betrayal of the Franks, and important details about the family's arrest and subsequent fate. Revised and updated with more than thirty percent new material, this is an indispensable volume for all those who seek a deeper understanding of Anne Frank and the brutal times in which she lived and died.

About this title

Review:

One of this book's great strengths is writer Melissa Müller's ability to situate Anne 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 Center. Sujik showed these pages to Müller, 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 annex through Anne's eyes only. Müller 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 fueled Anne's uncharitable comments about, for example, the middle-aged dentist with whom she was forced to share a room. Müller also plausibly identifies the Dutch informant who betrayed the secret annex's inhabitants to the Gestapo. Horror suffuses Müller'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 Müller 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."

About the Author:

Melissa Müller is the author of numerous books on the history of the Third Reich. Her biography of Anne Frank has been translated into eighteen languages to date. Müller lives in Munich with her family.

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1250050154
• ISBN 13: 9781250050151
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 480