Zlata's Diary
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Zlata's Diary (ISBN 0-14-024205-8) is a book by Zlata Filipović, a young girl living in Sarajevo while it was under siege in 1992.
Zlata wrote her diary (whom she called Mimmy) from 1991 to 1993 during a war in Sarajevo. It begins just before her eleventh birthday and ends just before she and her family escaped to Paris, France. It chronicles her daily life as war has an increasing impact on her city. She has been described as the Anne Frank of Sarajevo and, like The Diary of Anne Frank, it contains many descriptions of the horrors of war as a view from the innocence of a child. The parallels are further aided by the fact that the war Zlata lives through is motivated by ethnic and religious differences.
Zlata describes the day that the war started as "The day that time stood still". Zlata rarely had food, water or electricity, or power and lived in poverty and fear during this time.
Her diary has also been adapted into a choral work by Anthony Powers.
