Do You like book Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life In Wartime Sarajevo (2006)?
April 17. We got the UN relief package today. YO BABY YO, as the Fresh Prince of Bel Air would say. Tried to watch Murphy Brown but the sound was drowned out by shelling (I know, MORE shelling!) and then the rabbit ears were exploded by a sniper's bullet. RUDE! Pepsi just came out with limited-edition cans with Linda Evangelista on them. I wish I could get one. I haven't tasted processed sugar in over five months. Got an A in math, biology, and piano! The piano was exploded so had to mime the recital. Still, I only made two mistakes.yrs,ZlataZlata Filipovic actually comes across as a very bright and sensitive 11-year-old in her diaries, but the pop-culture references weirded me out. This text is like a mashup of Anne Frank and White Noise. Maybe I reacted this way because I was born the same time as her, and I was doing and watching and thinking many of the same things at age 11, minus cowering in the cellar during rounds of ethnic cleansing. The most astonishing thing in reading this is that the causes of war and the motives of the warring factions were too convoluted for a very smart 11-yr-old to try to sort out, even as she was being victimized by those disputes. Unlike Anne Frank, where there is a sure sense of who the bad people are and what they want to do, violence here seems arbitrary and destined to continue forever—artillery is just bad weather that has moved in to stay.
—Luke G
Zlata’s Diary is literally Zlata’s diary. Zlata lives in Sarajevo and starts keeping a diary in September 1991, not long before her 11th birthday. She excels in school, enjoys fashion magazines, and watches Murphy Brown on television. Six months later, she is recording the tragedies of war.Reading about war from a child’s perspective is an interesting experience. Zlata mentions politics several times, writing that “politics has started meddling around. It has put an ‘S’ on Serbs, an ‘M’ on Muslims, and a ‘C’ on Croats, it wants to separate them. And to do so it has chosen the worst, blackest pencil of all—the pencil of war which spells only misery and death” (97). Yet, she does not understand the significance politics plays in the war, never connecting the war with “ethnic cleansing.” But because politics doesn’t shape or warp Zlata’s perspective, she can truly see and express how senseless war is. She records the death of friends, the destruction of her city; she suffers without electricity, gas, food, and water. Several times, she expresses anger and despair, writing “I really don’t know whether to go on living and suffering, to go on hoping, or to take a rope and just . . . be done with it” (130). Early on, Zlata asks the most profound question of all:“God, is anyone thinking of us here in Sarajevo?” (85).I am only three years older than Zlata. If I heard about Bosnia, if we talked about the war in school, I have no recollection. Most everything I know about the genocide I learned years later as an adult.
—Leanna
Zlata Filipovic was a child living in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War from 1991-1993 (the ware actually ended in 1995, but her and her family managed to get out early), and this is the translation of the diary she kept during that time. It's much like a modern day Anne Frank, though Zlata did not have to be in hiding and we got to see and experience the war directly through her innocent eyes.I had originally read this book as a teenager shortly after it was initially published. Zlata is only a year or so older than me, so compared to Anne Frank who lived many years before I was born, this was someone my age, experiencing something that was going on RIGHT NOW in another part of the world. This made it much more real, shocking, and easier for me to identify with Zlata and really feel the impact of her experiences.At the time, just like Zlata, I didn't really know what the war was about, or why anyone was fighting, just that there was bombing, shooting and general violence, and that it is scary and probably should stop.Rereading it now as an adult, it inspired me to familiarize myself with the war and actually learn about what it was, why it was happening. I also wanted to know where Zlata is now. I was pleased to read that she is doing well, and still an activist living in Dublin.Keep it up Zlata!
—Sara
