Zlata's Diary

"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 the Bosnian war. She starts the fifth grade in the beginning of 1991 and she reunites her friends and her family.The war begins just before her eleventh birthday. 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.

The introduction is by a reporter named Janine di Giovanni and she writes that "I first met Zlata in the summer of 1993 when someone came up to me and told me about a girl being called the 'Anne Frank of Sarajevo'"

Zlata describes the day that the war started as "The day that time stood still". Zlata's family rarely had money for food, water, gas, or electricity, and lived in poverty and fear during this time. Some of her friends got killed by pieces of shrapnel and others that she loved dearly have gone to different places of the world to escape this horror. This hurt her very much. In 1992 - 1993, her diary got published and was released for the UNICEF week. This made her an instant celebrity in Sarajevo. Towards the end of 1993, she and her parents were transported to Paris.

Her diary has also been adapted into a choral work by Anthony Powers. The choral work was premiered by the Highcliffe Junior Choir and is featured on their CD One Small Voice.