QUILLBLOG

British author accused of exploiting Anne Frank

Gillan Walnes, co-founder and executive director of the Anne Frank Trust, is accusing British author Sharon Dogar of sexing up and exploiting the story of Anne Frank in her forthcoming novel Annexed. The story reimagines the relationship between Anne and Peter van Pels, who also lived in the secret apartment in the infamous Amsterdam canal house during the Second World War. According the Guardian, Walnes said:

I really don’t understand why we have to fictionalise the Anne Frank story, when young people engage with it anyway. To me it seems like exploitation. If this woman writer is such a good novelist, why doesn’t she create characters from scratch?

Walnes is particularly angered by one section of the book that deals with Peter’s sexuality. She said Dogar has put “21st-century mores on to young people” from a different time.

Dogar retorted that she tried to portray Peter and Anne’s story as accurately as possible, and even shared her manuscript with Anne’s only living relative, Buddy Elias, who eventually wished the author well after expressing initial concerns. Dogar also said she rejects the accusation that she’s sexualized the characters

Whilst it’s true to say that children of the war years lived according to different cultural mores and social strictures … it’s also true that there are some fundamental and universal human feelings that are biological rather than social. The state of adolescence existed before “teenagers” were invented. Adolescent hormones have always been in conflict with social rulings. This is why some of Anne’s thoughts remain as powerful and meaningful today as they were 60 years ago.

Comments are closed.