‘The Diary of a Young Girl’ by Anne Frank: ‘This book has given me a new direction in life’

The book that impacted me the most was, ‘The Diary of a Young Girl’ by Annelies Marie “Anne” Frank. It is an authentic and mesmerising account of the life of the German Jews in Holland and especially how the Frank family, the Van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer tactfully hide in a Secret Annex for 26 months to try and elude the German Nazis.

This non-fiction is idealised as one of the most transparent viewpoints of going through the phase of adolescence and how the entire world, except those who are in your age sphere, seems wrong. Frank rants on beautifully about her life before her family went into hiding, their very close calls, and their means of survival without drawing attention to themselves.

I first read this novel in seventh grade, when I was about the age that Frank started to write it. But, I was pleased to find that this had been included as a part of our subject in school, because it gave me an opportunity to peer into her perspective of the world and its unfairness/kindness once more.

As a teenager going through the delicate phase of adolescence myself, I think there can be no better impression that can feed my questions about the sudden change in my outlook, as Frank clearly pours her heart out throughout the book about how she feels alienated from family because they still do not treat her as a mature person, how she is always in the shadow of her elder sister and how she finds one person, who she can open up with, mainly because he’s her age.

This book has given me a new direction in life and made me realise, through peeking into her mind, where I might be going wrong and thus has strongly influenced me.

— The reader is a student based in Sharjah.