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.