Zlata -s Diary

Zlata 's Diary

THE AUTHOR :

Zlata Filipovic was born in Sarajevo in December 1980. She began writing this diary shortly before her eleventh birthday. Orginally published in Croatia by  the International Peace Centre, Zlata's Diary has since become a bestseller worldwide, published to date in thirty-three countries around the world.

SUMMARY:

In this very personal account of the war in Sarajevo, Zlata, a young schoolgirl, describes the nightmare her life became once the killing began. She had been

keeping a diary since Septembre  1991, a few months before the first barricades went up in the city and the heavy shelling began.

Before war Zlata was a lucky girl, who onIy thougt about things a normal 13-year-old girl thinks about: pop music, boys, and so on.

But then her life changed irrevocably.

Within a couple of mounths Serbian artillery positions were set up on the hills directly above her house.

Zlata watched her world fall apart.

Their family weekend house outside the town was destroyed and her best friends were killed, while playing in the park.

Nearly all her friends and relatives left Sarajevo. Zlata and her parents tried to flee too, but they were not allowed to leave this terrible town.

Most of the time there was no water, no electricity and their food consisted of

humanitarian aid packages or they bought something on the black market. This was very expensive.

Zlata watched all this with disbelief .

She was a prisoner in her own home and so she wrote down her hopes and fears into her diary.

ZLATA'S LIFE TODAY:

Just before Christmas 1993, a few days after her diary's publication in France, Zlata and her parents were allowed to leave Sarajevo, and flew to France on an UN plane.

First they lived in Paris. But in October 1995 they moved to Dublin. There Zlata goes to school again.

MYOPINION:

I think this book is very fascinating, because Zlata teils with heartbreaking honesty and clarity of her friends and relations she has lost and mourns the childhood that has gone for ever .

Her concise style brings a fresh perspective to the relentless miseries of existence in the Bosnian capital.

VOCABULARY:

account Bericht

nightmare Alptraum

shell beschießen (mit Grariaten) irrevocably unwiderruflich mourn trauern um concise kurz

relentless unbarmherzig