THE BOY WHO LOVED ANNE FRANK

Imagine if the boy in hiding with Anne Frank had survived the war...On 16 February 1944, Peter, Anne Frank's closest confidant in the Secret Annex, declared to her that if he got out alive, he would reinvent himself entirely; no one would ever know who he was, or where he had been. This is the story of what might have happened if the boy in hiding had survived the horror. After the war, Peter van Pels leaves liberated Europe and its ghosts behind him and makes for the United States, the land of self-invention; there, he flourishes in business, marries and raises a family. He lives in the present and plans for the future; for him, the past does not exist. But Peter's carefully constructed life is broken apart when The Diary of a Young Girl is published and becomes a sensation all over the world. As Anne Frank's words take on a strange and disturbing life of their own, enmeshed in bitter controversy and recrimination, Peter sees his past being adapted, distorted, argued over and endlessly reinterpreted, until the dissonance between his present and former lives sparks a crisis he cannot suppress.The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank is a compelling novel about the power of stories, the meaning of history and the possibility of coming to terms with an unbearable burden of memory.

Imagine if the boy in hiding with Anne Frank had survived the war...On 16 February 1944, Peter, Anne Frank's closest confidant in the Secret Annex, declared to her that if he got out alive, he would reinvent himself entirely; no one would ever know who he was, or where he had been. This is the story of what might have happened if the boy in hiding had survived the horror. After the war, Peter van Pels leaves liberated Europe and its ghosts behind him and makes for the United States, the land of self-invention; there, he flourishes in business, marries and raises a family. He lives in the present and plans for the future; for him, the past does not exist. But Peter's carefully constructed life is broken apart when The Diary of a Young Girl is published and becomes a sensation all over the world. As Anne Frank's words take on a strange and disturbing life of their own, enmeshed in bitter controversy and recrimination, Peter sees his past being adapted, distorted, argued over and endlessly reinterpreted, until the dissonance between his present and former lives sparks a crisis he cannot suppress.The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank is a compelling novel about the power of stories, the meaning of history and the possibility of coming to terms with an unbearable burden of memory.