Everyone knows about Anne Frank and her life hidden in the secret annex – but what about the boy who was also trapped there with her? In this powerful and gripping novel, Sharon Dogar explores what this might have been like from Peter’s point of view. What was it like to be forced into hiding with Anne Frank, first to hate her and then to find yourself falling in love with her? Especially with your parents and her parents all watching almost everything you do together. To know you’re being written about in Anne’s diary, day after day? What’s it like to start questioning your religion, wondering why simply being Jewish inspires such hatred and persecution? Or to just sit and wait and watch while others die, and wish you were fighting. As Peter and Anne become closer and closer in their confined quarters, how can they make sense of what they see happening around them? Anne’s diary ends on August 4, 1944, but Peter’s story takes us on, beyond their betrayal and into the Nazi death camps. He details with accuracy, clarity and compassion the reality of day to day survival in Auschwitz – and ultimately the horrific fates of the Annex’s occupants. "While Annexed does not depend upon a prior reading of The Diary of a Young Girl for interest or understanding, readers of that book will appreciate the opportunity to see Anne Frank's story given a benefit it could not have: hindsight."— The Horn Book , starred review "Readers are enlightened and deeply moved....Annexed is a superb addition to the Holocaust literature, and should not be missed."— School Library Journal , starred review "Showing equal skill in bringing history to life and in capturing the spirit of a young man searching for his identity amid chaos, Dogar has written a novel as provocative as it is devastating."— Publishers Weekly , starred review "The lines between written record, educated guess, and fictional construct are fascinatingly blurred here. . .made all the more so when readers consider the role perspective, translation, and editing play in the written record. The book’s skillful synthesis of all these facets should stimulate discussion about the nature of history, fiction, and truth."— The Bulletin , starred review "[Annexed] is compassionate and thoughtful, told in a very intimate way. Dogar gets the claustrophobia of the annexe across brilliantly, as it escapes in pointless bickering and petty resentments, but the picture of vital, interesting people with hopes, dreams, loves and ambitions rises equally vividly from the pages. Peter himself is wonderfully drawn: painfully shy, introspective and independent of thought."— The Book Bag (UK) Sharon Dogar is a children’s psychotherapist who lives in Oxford, England with her family. Prologue  May 1945 —Peter: Austria,  Mauthausen, sick bay I think I’m still alive. But I’m not sure. I’m ill. I must be because I’m lying down. We never lie down. In the camps there’s no such thing as rest. I should be carrying rocks up the quarry steps. It’s a long way to the top of the quarry. I never know if I will make it. If someone ahead of us falls, we all fall—unless we’re quick. Sometimes the guards wait until one of us is on the very last step, already thinking of laying down his burden, of the relief of letting down the weight. That’s when they reach out with their boots and kick us down. We fall like dominoes. That’s all I remember, falling down the side of the quarry. I feel my body jolt and bounce. I feel the other bodies land on me. I am crushed, bony body on bony body. We are all so sharp now. My bones crunch. I am suffocating. The bodies move off me, the dead pushed aside by the living. I can breathe. My bones click back into place. I am alive and must get up, or I will be piled up with the dead. I try to stand. I can see why the guards laugh. I look like a puppet. A puppet of bones with his strings all cut. I stand. I walk. I go on. But I know that really I am still dead on the ground, that each day a piece of us dies. And we let it die. We have to—to survive. Soon someone will come and wake me and the nightmare will begin. I’m waiting for the word, that word: Wystawach. Wake up. If they come, then I must stand up and work, or I must die. Perhaps I am already dying. Everyone does in the end, there’s no other way out. And now it’s my turn. It’s a relief. The problem with lying down is that it brings memories. They keep on coming, reminding me of who I am. The world. My life. The German Jews have a word for it. Heimweh. The longing for home. We avoid it if we can. It can be fatal. I am hot. My head aches. My body hurts. These are just words, they don’t explain the pain. The way my bones grind against each other. There are no words for pain like this. But the memories are worse—pictures of a time before. Of a time I must deny, so that when they come to wake me I can go on. Put one foot in front of the other, pretending that there is only this moment, this day, this night to get throu