a nutshell: with diary entries from Sept 1991 to Dec 1993, this is a young girl’s deeply moving, courageous & intelligent account of what it was like to have been flung into a fight for survival under the Bosnian War as it engulfed Sarajevo
a line: “They’re drawing maps, colouring with their crayons, but I think they’re crossing out human beings, childhood and everything that’s nice and normal.”
an image: as she has grown out of her clothes, Zlata has to borrow some from the wardrobe of a friend who has fled Sarajevo; she describes standing in the girl’s empty space, surrounded by broken windows & dust, saying the room is sad and so is she
a thought: the child’s simple observations hold more clearsightedness & compassion than the ‘grown-ups’ pulling the strings of politics – she comments that among friends and family there’ve always been Serbs, Croats & Muslims, questioning why politics has meddled to create separations
a fact: Zlata’s diary has now been translated into 36 languages; at one point she writes that some people compare her with Anne Frank, which frightens her as she doesn’t want to suffer the same fate – and, thankfully, Zlata does not
want to read Zlata’s Diary? visit here
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