Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Sarajevo by Zlata Filipovic, Janine di Giovanni (Introduction)

In a voice both innocent and wise, touchingly reminiscent of Anne Frank's, Zlata Filipovic's diary has awoken the conscience of the world. Now thirteen years old, Zlata began her diary just before her eleventh birthday, when there was peace in Sarajevo and her life was that of a bright, intelligent, carefree young girl. Her early entries describe her friends, her new skis, her family, her grades at school, her interest in joining the Madonna Fan Club. And then, on television, she sees the bombs falling on Dubrovnik. Though repelled by the sight, Zlata cannot conceive of the same thing happening in Sarajevo. When it does, the whole tone of her diary changes. Early on, she starts an entry to Dear Mimmy (named after her dead goldfish): SLAUGHTERHOUSE! MASSACRE! HORROR! CRIMES! BLOOD! SCREAMS! DESPAIR! We see the world of a child increasingly circumscribed by the violence outside. Zlata is confined to her family's apartment, spending the nights, as the shells rain down mercilessly, in a neighbor's cellar. And the danger outside steadily invades her life. No more school. Living without water and electricity. Food in short supply. The onslaught destroys the pieces she loves, kills or injures her friends, visibly ages her parents. In one entry Zlata cries out, War has nothing to do with humanity. War is something inhuman. In another, she thinks about killing herself. Yet, with indomitable courage and a clarity of mind well beyond her years, Zlata preserves what she can of her former existence, continuing to study piano, to find books to read, to celebrate special occasions - recording it all in the pages of this extraordinary diary. Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly A graphic firsthand look at the war in Sarajevo by a Croatian girl whose personal world has collapsed, this vivid, sensitive diary sounds an urgent and compelling appeal for peace. Filipovic begins her precocious journal in autumn 1991 as a contented 10-year-old preoccupied with piano and tennis lessons and saturated with American movies, TV shows, books and rock music. Soon the bombs start falling; her friends are killed by shrapnel or snipers' bullets; her family's country house burns down, and they subsist on UN food packages, without gas, electricity or water, as thousands of Sarajevans die. Filipovic, whose circle of friends included Serbs, Croats and Muslims, blames the former Yugoslavia's politicians for dividing ethnic groups and playing hell with people's lives. She and her parents escaped to Paris, and her diary, originally published in Croat by UNICEF, was reissued in France and has already been much written about in the U.S. Photos not seen by PW. 200,000 first printing; film rights to Universal; first serial to Newsweek; author tour Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. From School Library Journal YA-From September 1991 through October 1993, young Zlata Filipovic kept a diary. When she began it, she was 11 years old, concerned mostly with friends, school, piano lessons, MTV, and Madonna. As the diary ends, she has become used to constant bombing and snipers; severe shortages of food, water, and gas; and the end of a privileged adolescence in her native Sarajevo. Zlata has been described as the new Anne Frank. While the circumstances are somewhat similar, and Zlata is intelligent and observant, this diary lacks the compelling style and mature preceptions that gave Anne Frank's account such universality. The entire situation in the former Yugoslavia, however, is of such currency and concern that any first-person account, especially one such as this that speaks so directly to adolescents, is important and necessary. While not great literature, the narrative provides a vivid description of the ravages of war and its effect upon one young woman, and, as such, is valuable for today's YAs. Susan H. Woodcock, King's Park Library, Burke, VA Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal In September 1991, at the beginning of a new school year and while war was already as close as Croatia, Filipovic, a ten-year-old girl in Sarajevo began keeping a diary about her school friends, her classes, and her after-school activities. The following spring that childhood world disappeared when the war moved to Sarajevo. Instead of school and parties, her world came to consist of cowering in cellars during the shelling, trying to survive despite intermittent electric power and water supply, and sadness: sadness when friends and relatives left the besieged city for a safer area; sadness when those who remained behind were killed; sadness that her childhood had vanished. Filipovic has no interest in the politics of this war (she dismisses all political leaders contemptuously as kids) but only in its effects on those close to her. The power of her book lies precisely in its concern with innocence lost. Recommended for popular collections. Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist Zlata Filipovic of Sarajevo began keeping her diary in 1991, just before her eleventh birthday. Ebullient and accomplished, Zlata recorded the swirl of activities she avidly pursued, from school to piano lessons, skiing, parties, and watching her favorite TV shows, all American. We immediately sense that Zlata and her family have a deep love for their country, but just as we begin to enjoy Zlata's fine young mind and cheerful disposition, the chaos and terror of war shatter her world. Schools close, socializing becomes too risky, and what was once a cozy home is transformed into a fragile shelter bereft of electricity or water. In spite of great tragedy and deprivation, Zlata keeps making her lucid diary entries, carefully chronicling the claustrophobia, boredom, resignation, anger, despair, and fear war brings. Another birthday passes, and Zlata's observations become even sharper and more searing. The convoys of fleeing citizens remind her of movies she's seen of the Holocaust; she notices that grief and hardship have made her valiant parents haggard and sorrowful; and she can't believe that her clothes no longer fit. How could she be growing when she has so little to eat? With a precision and vision beyond her years, Zlata writes that the political situation is stupidity in motion, and more hauntingly, life in a closed circle continues. Zlata brings Sarajevo home as no news report can. Her diary was first published by UNICEF, then released in France; U.S. serial rights have gone to Newsweek, and Zlata and her parents will be visiting here this month. Donna Seaman From Kirkus Reviews Originally published in Croat by UNICEF, this is the wartime diary of a Sarajevo girl who has since moved to Paris. Zlata began keeping her diary at the age of 11, nearly eight months before the shelling of Sarajevo began. A chronicle that begins in September 1991 with Zlata buying school supplies is forced, by March 1993, to reckon with the fact that all ``the schools near me are either unusable or full of refugees.'' Zlata's voice, understandably, has difficulty maturing at a pace demanded by the events it records, and some passages communicate more bathos than outrage or insight. But that's history's fault, not Zlata's. (First serial rights to Newsweek) -- Copyright 1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.