Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Fiction & Related items

ANNELIES

David Gillham

A powerful and deeply humane new novel that asks the question, what if Anne Frank survived the Holocaust?

The year is 1945, and Anne Frank is sixteen years old. Having survived the concentration camps but lost her mother and sister along the way, she reunites with her father, Pim, in newly liberated Amsterdam. But it's not as easy to fit the pieces of their life back together. Anne is adrift, haunted by the ghosts of the horrors they experienced, while Pim is fixated on returning to normalcy. Her beloved diary has been lost, and her dreams of becoming a writer seem distant and pointless now.

As Anne struggles to overcome the brutality of memory and build a new life for herself, she grapples with heartbreak, grief, and ultimately the freedom of forgiveness. A story of trauma and redemption, Annelies honors Anne Frank's legacy as not only a symbol of hope and perseverance but also a complex young woman of great ambition and heart.

Anne Frank is a cultural icon whose diary painted a vivid picture of the Holocaust and made her an image of humanity in one of history's darkest moments. But she was also a person: a precocious young girl with a rich inner life and tremendous skill as a writer. In this masterful new novel, David R. Gillham rescues the person from history and explores with breathtaking empathy the woman--and the writer--she might have become.

David R. Gillhamis theNew York Timesbestselling author ofCity of Women. He studied screenwriting at the University of Southern California before transitioning into fiction. After moving to New York City, Gillham spent more than a decade in the book business, and he now lives with his family in western Massachusetts.

Available products
Book Published 2019-01-15 by Viking
Book Published 2019-01-15 by Viking

Comments

...This is a tough but rewarding read. Gillham not only captures Anne's wrenching emotional journey, he explores the hardships residents of Amsterdam (indeed, all of Europe) endured as they struggled to recover from the war and Nazi occupation... Read more...

In this haunting what-if,DavidGillhamasks us to reflect on thequandary of how one learnsin the unimaginable wake of the Holocaustto live again,shedding a powerful, human light on the tragedy of lost potential.

Beautifully crafted... Highly recommended for admirers of literary historical fiction such as Krisitn Hannah's The Nightingale and Martha Hall Kelly's LIilac Girls.

InAnnelies, David Gillham not onlyexploreswhat might have happened if Anne Frank had survived, but also draws an intimate portrait of life as a Jewish survivor in post-war Amsterdam. By turns a coming-of-age novel and a story of survival, redemption, and familyAnneliesis a meticulously researched, emotionally resonant what-if.

Q&A - David Gillham about ANNELIES Read more...

I had to slow down reading Annelies to better absorb the beauty and power of David Gillham's words. His depth of understanding of human resilience and our capacity to survive and find the light after unimaginable darkness is a gift. A stunning evocation of the human spirit and its ability to inspire across borders, languages, and decades.

Over 30 years ago, David R. Gillham, then in his late 20s, read "The Diary of Anne Frank," the famous first-person account by the German-Dutch teenager who hid with her family from the Nazis in wartime Holland. At the time, Gillham wasn't long past a graduate program in screenwriting. But what he soon envisioned writing was a novel based on this question: What might have happened to Anne Frank had she lived? "I picked up a copy of her diary and was just blown away, just thunderstruck," Gillham, of North Amherst, said during a recent interview at his home. "The writing was so good, and I thought, 'If she wrote this well at 14 and 15, what could she have done if she'd survived?' " ... Read more...

UK: Fig Tree ; Russia: TEXT

...powerful and deeply humane... I just genuinely loved this book. Absolutely stunning. Well researched, excellently written and a book that most certainly gets you feeling something as well as a stunning adaptation. Read more...

...Gillham imagines the happy ending the real-life Anne Frank never had, complete with Anne's chipper replies to fan letters about her best-selling "The Secret Annex." Gillham is a powerful storyteller, and Annelies is marbled with spare eloquence that captures the absurdity of life after the camps, in phrases like "Office work after Auschwitz. No novelist, however gifted, could rival the power of Anne Frank, a girl who was able to conjure hope amid humanity's darkest years. Still, months after a gunman killed 11 worshippers in a Pittsburgh synagogue, a novel that reminds the world to remember Anne Frank is most welcome. Read more...

To imagine the could-have-been life of Anne Frank, one of the real-life pillars of our understanding of the Holocaust, is a risky undertaking, but David Gilham delivers his story with sensitivity and grace. The result is not only a poignant reminder of all that was lost during the war, but a vivid, searching exploration of what it meant to exist in the aftermath.

Annelies is one of the Best Books of the Week (Jan 12, 2019): What if Anne Frank had survived the Holocaust, reuniting with her father in postwar Amsterdam, trying to cobble together a new life? A beautifully imagined book on resilience and grief. Read more...