"To be interrupted just ast as you are thinking of a glorious future!"; this line from ANNE FRANK'S TALES FROM THE SECRET ANNEX fully describes the young girl's fate -- as she hid in an attic from a world that wanted her to pay for its past mistakes.
Anne Frank: Diary of A Young Girl was published in 1952 and gave her posthumous international recognition. What are less well known are the short storeis, fables, essays, and reminiscences which she kept in a separate journal. Here, for the first time in hardcover, are all of these "tales", including previously unpublished material and some of Anne's most ambitious writing. These new pieces, translated by the award-winning Ralph Manheim, add to o9ur sense of Anne as the personification of the human spirit's ability to live through hell, never bowing to petty and degrading forces.
Anne Frank's stories display a real gift. With sensitivity and intelligence, she came to grips in her imagination with a world of which she had no experience. While the question of what she could have given the world had she lived lingers on every page, her courage in showing us her "secret self" is in its way a partial, heartbreaking answer. With wisdom beyond her years, she used her imagination to give her mind the freedom her body was denied. As her diary was a view of human nature in captivity, her stories are a view of the human soul flying free.
Editor's Note
This edition of Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex contains material appearing for the first time in hardcover: "Paula's Plane Trip," "Jackie," "Cady's LIfe," "The Flea," "The Battle of the Potatoes," "Villians!" "Sunday," and "Who Is Interesting?" These tales, as well as "Roomers or Subtenants," "The Porter's Family," and "The Sink of Iniquity" have been newly translated by Ralph Manheim. The other pieces in this collection have been translated by Michel Mok.
