Lawrence Graver's thorough investigation of the controversy surrounding Anne Frank and the play based on her diary is as intense as a page-turning mystery novel. Graver weaves the tale of bringing Anne Frank's world-famous diary to the stage, and casts an overlooked player in a major role. Meyer Levin, a Jewish writer relatively well-known in the 1950s, and one of the most successful Jewish writers to write about Jewish themes at that time, was the first to review Anne Frank's diary in the States. In fact, he was instrumental in getting the diary published, and he forged a friendship with Otto Frank. The friendship turned sour as Levin fought for rights to compose the stage script for 1955's "The Diary of Anne Frank." In a legal battle that lasted thirty years, Levin vs. Frank lost Levin his rights to the script he felt best represented Anne--and her Jewishness. Frank and Doubleday sided with the well-known Hacketts--who would win a Pulitzer for their then-loved, now-criticized Everyman version of Anne's diary--and staged the play to rave reviews around the world. Levin took his script to Israel, fighting legal battles in court even to stage it there. Graver does an excellent job of exposing the story and the personalities of all its characters, including Lillian Helman. But Graver rightly shies away from demonizing Levin and canonizing Frank, or vice versa. His loyalty is first to accuracy, and an account that could easily become polarized by a mission to perpetuate the saintliness of Anne Frank and her family comes off as more complex and, ultimately, more informative.

Because you wait and wait, and then three don't turn up at once.

I just received this book and haven't read it yet. It looks quite good.

HOWEVER! because I read the description too quickly, and because I was misled by the other reader reviews, I thought that the actual text of the play was here, in both languages, in addition to a critical apparatus. Not so!

All of the other reader reviews are about Beckett's play itself, which is not part of this book!

I discovered 'Waiting for Godot' when I was 15 and it is still my favourite play 15 years later. It deals with human frailty, and shouts out all the big questions like, 'Why are we here'? Beckett asks us to confront one the the bigest concerns ever faced by human kind and that is 'Is there such a thing as eternity, and if there is what is it's purpose'? Every culture has myths and mechanisms which seek to understand the eternal. The Egyptians tried to conquer eternity with their pryamids and I belive that 'Waiting For Godot' is the modern equivalent. Waiting for Godot is touching and humerous at times, but also filled with bitter irony. It is a play that speaks for human kind and it lets us know that we are not alone with our frailty. I can not reccomend this play enough. Samuel Beckett certainly deserved to win the Nobel Prize for literature.