I need to get this out of the way before I continue with this review: I am not giving this book five stars out of a sense of obligation. I genuinely think that this book is a masterpiece, not to mention I don't imagine that Anne would have wanted hollow praise or an insincere, charitable rating.

Perhaps it's because I'm running on two hours of sleep, but I'm writing this review with tears in my eyes. In reading her diary, I developed a kinship of sorts with Anne. In Anne, I saw glimpses of myself, glimpses of people I know or have known, glimpses of someone with whom I am tethered by our shared humanity. In one way or another, Anne became a friend of sorts to me, and I felt privileged to get to know her in this capacity. She was a fascinating, witty, self-aware, wise and multi-faceted person.

Anne gives such an engaging account of her time living through a genocide in hiding, all the while navigating the turbulent time that is teenage girlhood. It strikes a perfect balance between the narrative and novelistic and the history. She tells her story in a way that shows her tremendous skill as a writer and gives the reader insight into her and her life. She breathes the complexity of humanity into such a dark period, illuminating the small pockets of joy that we often forget in such eras. It is so easy to reduce victims of the Holocaust to statistics and things we know that many of them had to endure, but to read a first-hand account from someone who lived through this time makes it a bit more personal, in particular if you're not Jewish yourself (like me) or if you haven't lived through a remotely similar experience. The complexity of her relationships with those with whom she was in hiding were fascinating to learn about.

I truly do not wish to make this about myself, as it would be inappropriate, but I have been hyperaware of my loneliness in recent weeks. In reading Anne's diary, I felt understood and a little less alone. Of course, I'm fortunate that I'm not in her specific circumstances; I do not have to fear for my life, thank God. But, her feelings really resonated with me, and a selfish part of me will consider this to be amongst my favourite books of all-time because of how Anne is able to capture loneliness and alienation and examine herself in a way that felt familiar to how I did.

With the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people, it is shocking that so many people who have read Anne's book and are still able to dehumanise those who are being killed and otherwise mistreated (understatement of the millennium) by the apartheid state that has persecuted them for the better part of a century. Anne's diary demonstrates the humanity of those who are persecuted by a tyrannical state. Anne was a proud Jewish girl, but there was so much more to her than just that. Her book urges its readers to focus on our shared humanity.