A qui­et­ly pow­er­ful explo­ration of mem­o­ry and for­get­ting, from one of France’s lead­ing fem­i­nist pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als

In 2021, the award-win­ning French writer Lola Lafon was grant­ed per­mis­sion to stay overnight – alone for ten hours – in the Annex in Ams­ter­dam where Anne Frank and her fam­i­ly had hid­den from the Nazis between 1942 and 1944. Lafon’s vis­it to this space, where Anne Frank wrote her famous diary, evoked the con­fine­ment and con­stant dan­ger suf­fered by the Franks, and the fam­i­ly’s ghost­ly pres­ence as well. ​“The night was inhab­it­ed, lit by reflec­tions,” Lafon writes. ​“Some urgency still dwelled at the heart of the Annex, crouched there, ready to be discovered.”

Explor­ing the many sto­ries told about Anne Frank, Lafon tries to find the pre­co­cious girl at the heart of the ven­er­at­ed and exploit­ed myth, a dis­ci­plined writer whose famous diary is in fact a won­der­ful­ly con­struct­ed lit­er­ary work. Through­out, Lafon reflects on what it means to lose loved ones, both Lafon’s own fam­i­ly in the Holo­caust and her child­hood friend to the Khmer Rouge. A prizewin­ner and best­seller in France, this book asks us to con­sid­er the sto­ries we tell our­selves about tragedy, how we grap­ple with loss, and why, in the face of dan­ger and con­fine­ment, women write.