Francine Prose, _Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife_

AN EXCELLENT BOOK. Informed and judicious on the history of the text of the diary and on the debates surrounding its theater and film adaptations, its authenticity, its use in the schools, its value as a document of the Holocaust (and the limits of that value), but also does justice to Anne Frank's real literary skill and accomplishment. That Anne Frank was truly a writer as well as a victim of the Nazis has been pointed out before, by Philip Roth, John Berryman, Cynthia Ozick, and others, but I rejoice in seeing the case made once again so thoroughly and authoritatively.