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."


From School Library Journal
YA-This biography is in no way a substitution for Anne Frank's moving diary but it is a well-written addition to our knowledge of the young woman, her family, and her tragically short life. What is new here is the depth of background. M?ller includes a family tree; a family history; and considerable insight into the character, personality, and quality of life of Anne's parents, relatives, and friends. Interviews with many of these surviving people give a clearer idea of the situation and Anne's reactions to it. There seems to be no contradiction to her diary statements, but Anne's father, Otto Frank, had admittedly suppressed though not destroyed several pages of those writings, some of them dealing with Anne's evaluation of her mother's life and marriage. This recovered material shows Anne's feelings to be kindly and understanding. Also, the question of who betrayed the Secret Annex's residents is analyzed. One chapter covers the seven-month period from the time of the arrest, imprisonment in Westerbrok, and the family's transfer to Auschwitz-Birkenau to the deaths of Edith, Margot, and Anne. Information on the concentration-camp existence is based on reports of those who encountered Anne there. An epilogue reviews the experiences and fates of those friends, heroic helpers, possible betrayers, and surviving relatives of the Frank family. A dozen photographs of Anne, her family, and her friends are included. The book closes with a moving four-page note by Miep Gies, who salvaged and preserved Anne's diary.Frances Reiher, Fairfax County Public Library, VACopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

FROM OUR EDITORS

Though her own account of her too-short life is familiar to millions, one of the century's most remarkable figures, Anne Frank, has never before been the subject of a full biography. Melissa M￯﾿ﾽller, the author of Anne Frank: The Biography, conducted exclusive interviews with Frank's family and friends and was given access to previously unavailable correspondence in fashioning this impartial look at a life that, though tragically brief, has touched millions of people around the world.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

For people all over the world, Anne Frank, the vivacious, intelligent Jewish girl with a crooked smile and huge dark eyes, has become the "human face of the Holocaust." Her diary of twenty-five months in hiding, a precious record of her struggle to keep hope alive through the darkest days of this century, has touched the hearts of millions. Here, after five decades, is the first biography of this remarkable figure. Drawing on exclusive interviews with family and friends, on previously unavailable correspondence, and on documents long kept secret, Melissa Muller creates a nuanced portrait of her famous subject. This is the flesh-and-blood Anne Frank, unsentimentalized and therefore all the more affecting - Anne Frank restored to history. Muller traces Anne's life from her idyllic childhood in an assimilated family, long established in Frankfurt banking circles, to her passionate adolescence in German-occupied Amsterdam and her desperate end in Bergen-Belsen at the age of sixteen. Full of revelations, this biography casts new light on Anne's relations with her mother, whom she treats harshly in the diary, and solves an enduring mystery: who betrayed the families hiding in the annex just when liberation was at hand?

SYNOPSIS

October 1998

Though her own account of her too-short life is familiar to millions, one of the century's most remarkable figures, Anne Frank, has never before been the subject of a full biography. Melissa Müller, the author of Anne Frank: The Biography, conducted exclusive interviews with Frank's family and friends and was given access to previously unavailable correspondence in fashioning this impartial look at a life that, though tragically brief, has touched millions of people around the world.

FROM THE CRITICS

Newsday

Remarkable . . . Mller has achieved the near-impossible by restoring human proportions to the near mythical Anne. - Susan Jacoby

Chicago Tribune

Impressive, convincing. - Carolyn Alessio

Newsweek

This meticulous and gripping narrative honors in full a life we thought we knew. - Laura Shapiro

New York Times Book Review

One might ask, what remains to be said about Anne Frank? Quite a bit, as it turns out. - Michiko Kakutani

Jonathan Rosen

Unfortunately. . . .Nazism in this book is an unexamined evil, abstract. . . .Muller, by making her biography little more than a factual expansion of Anne Frank's diary, makes the war years seem a matter of individual responses. . . .Muller . . .presents [the five new diary pages] in a far less sensational manner than the newspapers that picked up the story. —The New York Times Book Review Read all 11 "From The Critics" >

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