When You Listen to This Song
On Memory, Loss, and Writing
Published on 18. November 2025
Book
Hardback
176 pages
978-0-300-27588-9 (ISBN)
Description
A quietly powerful exploration of memory and forgetting, from one of France's leading feminist public intellectuals
In 2021, the award-winning French writer Lola Lafon was granted permission to stay overnight-alone for ten hours-in the Annex in Amsterdam where Anne Frank and her family had hidden from the Nazis between 1942 and 1944. Lafon's visit to this space, where Anne Frank wrote her famous diary, evoked the confinement and constant danger suffered by the Franks, and the family's ghostly presence as well. "The night was inhabited, lit by reflections," Lafon writes. "Some urgency still dwelled at the heart of the Annex, crouched there, ready to be discovered."
Exploring the many stories told about Anne Frank, Lafon tries to find the precocious girl at the heart of the venerated and exploited myth, a disciplined writer whose famous diary is in fact a wonderfully constructed literary work. Throughout, Lafon reflects on what it means to lose loved ones, both Lafon's own family in the Holocaust and her childhood friend to the Khmer Rouge. A prizewinner and bestseller in France, this book asks us to consider the stories we tell ourselves about tragedy, how we grapple with loss, and why, in the face of danger and confinement, women write.
In 2021, the award-winning French writer Lola Lafon was granted permission to stay overnight-alone for ten hours-in the Annex in Amsterdam where Anne Frank and her family had hidden from the Nazis between 1942 and 1944. Lafon's visit to this space, where Anne Frank wrote her famous diary, evoked the confinement and constant danger suffered by the Franks, and the family's ghostly presence as well. "The night was inhabited, lit by reflections," Lafon writes. "Some urgency still dwelled at the heart of the Annex, crouched there, ready to be discovered."
Exploring the many stories told about Anne Frank, Lafon tries to find the precocious girl at the heart of the venerated and exploited myth, a disciplined writer whose famous diary is in fact a wonderfully constructed literary work. Throughout, Lafon reflects on what it means to lose loved ones, both Lafon's own family in the Holocaust and her childhood friend to the Khmer Rouge. A prizewinner and bestseller in France, this book asks us to consider the stories we tell ourselves about tragedy, how we grapple with loss, and why, in the face of danger and confinement, women write.
Reviews / Votes
"Lafon is unflinching in her observations . . . and in her questions. . . . The story of the Franks and the author's quest to investigate her own experience intertwine to create a testament to the power of words. A poignant historiography of Anne Frank's writing and the author's response to it."-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"This is a gor-geous book, and the trans-la-tion reads as flaw-less. It is hard to find a new approach to the Holo-caust, Anne Frank, and to those who died and those who sur-vived, but Lafon does so in this mov-ing and orig-i-nal book."-Shara Kronmal, Jewish Book Council
"Lola Lafon's book is an unusually haunting meditation on history, memory, and what the living owe to the dead, via a uniquely personal immersion in the story of Anne Frank."-Ruth Franklin, author of The Many Lives of Anne Frank
"This book brings Anne Frank to life not as a victim, but as a writer. In meditating on Frank's genius, Lafon lets us into writing's intent: 'We write . . . to lay hold of reality.'"-Darcey Steinke, author of This Is the Door: The Body, Pain, and Faith
"Lola Lafon's memoiristic meditation sneaks up on us with a quiet but distinct emotional and intellectual intensity. Rather than narrate in booming voiceover the familiar story of the very famous and doomed Anne Frank, Lafon slips in through a much more interesting writerly side entrance, as she prepares herself for an unlikely sort of sleepover with the dead."-Adina Hoffman, author of Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architects of a New City
Accolades for the French edition:
Grand prix des lectrices de Elle, Prix Decembre, and Prix Les Inrockuptibles
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 220 mm
Width: 144 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
306 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-300-27588-9 (9780300275889)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Lola Lafon is a French writer who grew up in Eastern Europe and studied dance and music in Paris and New York. Her prizewinning books include The Little Communist Who Never Smiled and Reeling: A Novel. She lives in Paris, France. Lauren Elkin is a French and American writer and translator. She is the author of several books, including Flaneuse and Scaffolding, and lives in London, UK.