''It holds you with the same intensity as The Diary of Anne Frank and leaves you heart-broken, illuminated, and amazed at the capacity for courage'' GUARDIAN

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''I never realised that there could be such suffering in the world, and that anyone could live through it'' - from Edith''s diary, 1st July 1945

After Germany occupied the Netherlands in 1940, fourteen-year-old Edith was still filling her diary with carefree stories of school, parties and boys. But her entries soon record a darkening world. By 1942, as the Nazis escalated their persecution of the Jewish population, Edith began a bitter struggle to survive.

Hidden in plain sight but a courageous Christian family, with a German officer billeted in the next room, Edith faced the horrors of war under constant threat of discovery and betrayal. Weaving together Edith''s diaries with letters smuggled between family members and her own memories, this extraordinary memoir of ''the Anne Frank who lived'' is a profoundly moving account of grief, loss, courage - and one girl''s remarkable belief in humanity in the face of despair.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY ESTHER FREUD

''One of the best and most moving memoirs I have ever read'' RUTH RENDELL

''It''s impossible to get through this inspiring and great-hearted volume dry-eyed'' WASHINGTON POST

''Both memoir and meditation, it is moving and wise . . . neither sanguine nor sentimental about the Holocaust and man''s capacity for evil'' LINDA HOLT, INDEPENDENT

''Truly moving . . . leaving one with great hope in humanity'' THE TIMES

A VIRAGO MODERN CLASSIC