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  • Published: 29 January 2014
  • ISBN: 9780241952436
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $22.99

The Diary of a Young Girl




70th anniversary edition of the world's most famous diary

70th Anniversary Edition

In the summer of 1942, fleeing the horrors of the Nazi occupation, Anne Frank and her family were forced into hiding in the back of an Amsterdam warehouse.

Aged thirteen when she went into the secret annexe, Anne kept a diary in which she confided her innermost thoughts and feelings, movingly revealing how the eight people living under these extraordinary conditions coped with the daily threat of discovery and death, being cut off from the outside world, petty misunderstandings and the unbearable strain of living like prisoners.

An intimate record of tension and struggle, adolescence and confinement, anger and heartbreak, this is the definitive edition of the diary of Anne Frank.

  • Published: 29 January 2014
  • ISBN: 9780241952436
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $22.99

About the author

Anne Frank

Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt am Maine in Germany in 1929. She is the author of The Diary of a Young Girl, which tells the remarkable true-story of a young, Jewish girl against the backdrop of the horrors of the Second World War. Adolescent preoccupations and emotions are recorded alongside the growing powers of the Nazis and their imposition of Anti-Jewish Laws to create a compelling, poignant insight into family life under Nazi rule.

Anne Frank moved to Holland with her family when the Nazis became powerful in Germany. The Nazis believed that some races, such as Jews and gypsies did not deserve the right to live and they started to arrest, transport and kill them. Afraid for their lives, Anne and her family went into hiding. During the terrible time in hiding, Anne was growing from a young girl into a woman and she recorded her thoughts and experiences in a diary: the constant fear of discovery, the conflicts with her mother, her emerging sexuality, and her hopes for the future. As the diary progresses, Anne's childish innocence is replaced by premature wisdom and reflection; she not only expresses her concerns with their personal sufferings but also political events unfolding far from their hiding place. The family hid in the Secret Annexe at the back of a warehouse from July 1942, but ultimately the work of their protectors was undermined by the actions of Nazi collaborators and spies. In August 1944, they were discovered and taken to concentration camps. 

Anne died of typhus in 1945, imprisoned at Bergen-Belsen, just a few months before her sixteenth birthday. Her diary, written between 12 June 1942 and 1 August 1944, was found after the war and later published by her father Otto H. Frank, the only surviving member of the family. It has become a bestseller throughout the world and is an extraordinary piece of writing from such a young girl, detailing her emotional transformation from childhood to adolescence and reminding us of the horror of prejudice and persecution.

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Praise for The Diary of a Young Girl

A modern classic . . . Anne's diary tells a story that is true, memorable, important and strongly personalized . . . compelling reading

The Times

Rings down the decades as the most moving testament to the persecution of innocence

Daily Mail

Anne Frank's diary is one of the greatest books of the century . . . As she brings herself and her circumstances into such buzzing, engaged life on the page, she triumphs over her history. We return to her again and again, unable to believe that this hymn to life was written on the way to Belsen

Guardian