Published in 2006 (first published 1993)
240 pages
Zlata Filipović is a Bosnian-Croat writer and author of the book Zlata’s Diary.
From 1991 to 1993, she wrote in her diary (called “Mimy”) about the horrors of war in Sarajevo, through which she was living. Some news agencies and media outlets labeled her the “Anne Frank of Sarajevo”. Unlike Frank, however, Zlata and her family all survived and escaped to Paris in 1993 where they stayed for a year. She attended St. Andrew’s College, Dublin senior school, going on to graduate from the University of Oxford in 2001 with a BA in human sciences, and now lives in Dublin, Ireland where she also studied at Trinity College Dublin.
Zlata has continued to write as she wrote the Foreword to The Freedom Writers Diary and having co-edited Stolen Hearts: Young People’s War Diaries, From World War I to Iraq. She appeared on the talk show Tout le monde en parle on 19 November 2006. In 2011 she produced the short film Stand Up! for a BeLoNg To Youth Services campaign against homophobic bullying in schools.
What is this book about?
When Zlata’s Diary was first published at the height of the Bosnian War, it became an international bestseller and was compared to The Diary of Anne Frank, both for the freshness of its voice and the grimness of the world it describes. It begins as the day-today record of the life of a typical eleven-year-old girl, preoccupied by piano lessons and birthday parties. But as war engulfs Sarajevo, Zlata Filipovic becomes a witness to food shortages and the deaths of friends and learns to wait out bombardments in a neighbor’s cellar. Yet throughout she remains courageous and observant. The result is a book that has the power to move and instruct readers a world away.
