The Lion, the Children and the Bookcase

‘The Lion, the Children and the Bookcase’, Margaret Reynolds C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Anne Frank’s diary, or The Diary of a Young Girl, were published in 1950 and 1947 respectively. Frank’s document is a testament to history. Lewis’s story is usually read as a fantasy or Christian allegory. But both books deal with the experience of racial hatred, betrayal, displacement, alienation, loss of identity and the damage inflicted on adults and on children. This article examines the connections, metaphorical and real, that link Frank’s statement of witness to Lewis’s reinterpretation of the effects of the 1939–45 war.