Likened to a modern day Anne Frank, Zlata Filipovic provides us with a pre-adolescents first hand account of the war in Sarajevo in 1991 - 1993. Written with both a childhood innocence, as well as an adult like perspective, the book Zlata's Diary containes a mixture of normal, every day thoughts of a young girl regarding movie stars and famous singers and the deep philisophical musings of a child that has looked war in the face and grown up too quickly as a result.

Filled with poignant passages such as,

"The City Maternity Hopsital has burned down. I was born there. . . The mothers and babies were saved. . . When the fire broke out two women were giving birth. The babies are alive. God, people get killed here, they die here, they diappear, things go up in flames here, and out of the flames, new lives are born."

and

"I keep wanting to explain these stupid politics to myself, because it seems to me that politics caused this war, making it our everyday reality. War has crossed out the day and replaced it with horror and now horrors are unfolding instead of days. It looks to me as though these politics mean Serbs, Croats, and Muslims. But they are all people. They are all the same. They all look like people, there's no difference. They all have arms, legs and heads, they walk and talk, but now there's 'something' that wants to make them different."

this book will grab your heart and keep it gripped long after you have finished it.