Het Achterhuis
1944
- autobiographies
- ethnic relations
- dutch literature
- jews-netherlands
- german occupation
- library staff picks
- race relations
- jews
- diaries
- jewish personal narratives
The story
Het Achterhuis is de titel van het dagboek van Anne Frank (1929-1945) voor het eerst uitgegeven op 25 juni 1947. Het is genoemd naar het onderduikpand Het Achterhuis op de Prinsengracht en is het verhaal van een ondergedoken jong Joods meisje ten tijde van de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Het is wereldwijd een van de meest gelezen boeken. Sinds 2009 staat Annes dagboek op de Werelderfgoedlijst voor documenten van UNESCO. ---------- Also contained in: [Works of Anne Frank](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2931445W)
What it’s like
The Diary of Anne Frank in its Dutch original is a quiet, confined read: a teenage girl's chatty, observant entries written in cramped rooms behind a bookcase, where daily life is measured in shared meals, ration cards, whispered arguments and the slow arithmetic of waiting. The prose is candid and conversational, full of schoolgirl wit and sudden flashes of lyric feeling, with ordinary sensory detail (the smell of cabbage, the sound of footsteps on the warehouse floor, a patch of sky seen through an attic window) doing most of the atmospheric work. Its mood is a restless, intimate melancholy that drifts between tenderness and dread, and it reads best in slow, unhurried stretches: a rainy Sunday, a quiet evening alone, or a patient re-read. The emotional arc follows a young writer's growing self-awareness and her hopes for a future. Intensity is low on the page: there is no graphic violence or gore, and the menace of the occupation comes through rumour, fear and absence rather than depiction, though the book's known ending makes its tone heavy. It suits readers who want a deeply human, understated account of history, told through one teenager's voice.
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