The Diary of a Young Girl

The Diary of a Young Girl is a diary written in Dutch by Anne Frank. She began it in 1942, writing secretly to an imaginary friend. She wrote it while she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The family was caught in 1944 and Anne Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. After the war, the diary was found by Anne's father, Otto Frank. He was the only known survivor of the family. The diary has now been published in more than 60 different languages. It is now considered a classic of war literature. The diary was rescued from a reject pile by cookbook publisher Judith Jones.
It was first published as "Het Achterhuis. Dagboekbrieven 12 juni 1942 – 1 augustus 1944" ("The Annex: Diary Notes from 12 June 1942 – 1 August 1944") by Contact Publishing in Amsterdam in 1947. After it was translated into English as "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl" by Doubleday &amp; Company (United States) and Valentine Mitchell (United Kingdom) in 1952, it became very famous critically. It became very popular, and the 1955 play "The Diary of Anne Frank" and movie version were both based on the diary. The play was first acted in New York City. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1956. The book is in several lists of the top books of the twentieth century. It discusses the themes of sharing and selfishness in the war, about how someone can be different on the inside and the outside, and about the loneliness of growing up.