Ruth Franklin — The Many Lives of Anne Frank - with Frank Foer

In this innovative biography, Ruth Franklin explores the transformation of Anne Frank (1929-1945) from ordinary teenager to icon, shedding new light on the young woman whose diary of her years in hiding, now translated into more than seventy languages, is the most widely read work of literature to arise from the Holocaust.Comprehensively researched but experimental in spirit, this book chronicles and interprets Anne's life as a Jew in Amsterdam during World War II while also telling the story of the diary--its multiple drafts, its discovery, its reception, and its message for today's world. Writing alongside Anne rather than over her, Franklin explores the day-to-day perils of the Holocaust in the Netherlands as well as Anne's ultimate fate, restoring her humanity and agency in all their messiness, heroism, and complexity.With antisemitism once again in the news, The Many Lives of Anne Frank takes a fresh and timely look at the debates around Anne's life and work, including the controversial adaptations of the diary, Anne's evolution as a fictional character, and the ways her story and image have been politically exploited. Franklin reveals how Anne has been understood and misunderstood, both as a person and as an idea, and opens up new avenues for interpreting her life and writing in today's hyperpolarized world.PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780300248128?ic_referral=RG8IDROX9OZ1oacR0n_ouo9Ji_hr-LIkA5Lvyx1RQWswM5OYx9kju5Fg-pBXb3pn_pIaW91w1HVZZb6Vh7E9yoh4SiTH_mfRdeuIr-K9Fdp-3RYXCGxvPU9DN4IPrundG2eLegRuth Franklin is the author of A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction, a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, and of Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.Franklin is in conversation with Frank Foer. Foer is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of The Last Politician, World Without Mind and How Soccer Explains the World. For seven years, he edited The New Republic.*recorded 1/29/2025