Is it hard to read?
No, the language is direct and spare, and the dated diary entries follow events chronologically. The difficulty is emotional: school reports and birthdays sit alongside bombardment and wartime deaths.
Nonfiction · Biography & Memoir · History · Young Adult
Zlata's Diary
Reading facts
✓ Checked- Reading effort
- 24 / 100Light
- Length
- 256 pagesPenguin Books · 2006
- Reading time
- 5 hat 50 pages an hour ·
- Pace
- Variable
- Emotional intensity
- 5 / 5
About 5 h · at 30 minutes a day, about 11 days
Estimated from the page count of this edition. Dense books can take longer than the estimate.
About the book
Zlata Filipović records her life in Sarajevo from 1991 to 1993, as school, piano lessons and birthday parties give way to the conditions of a city under siege. Addressing her diary as Mimmy, she writes about food shortages, friends killed in the Bosnian War and shelling that sends her family into a neighbor's cellar, alongside her longing for familiar people and routines.
Reader notes
The dated entries stay close to a child's immediate concerns: school reports and birthdays remain worth recording even amid bombardment. The language is direct, and it records wartime deaths. It offers a personal record of daily survival, without the distance or scope of a general history.
How it reads
- Writing style
- Conversational · Direct · Spare
- Tone
- Dark · Intimate · Melancholic · Tense
- Structure
- Chronological nonfiction
- Driven by
- Character · Relationships · Voice
- Point of view
- Epistolary · First person
- Setting
- Sarajevo
- Evidence style
- Personal experience · Primary documents
- Practical orientation
- Reflective
- Nonfiction form
- History · Letters diaries · Memoir autobiography
Reading complexity
- Writing
- 2 / 5
- Ideas
- 2 / 5
- Structure
- 2 / 5
- Background knowledge
- 1 / 5
About this profile
Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).
- Writing
- How much attention the sentences and language require.
- Ideas
- How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
- Structure
- How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
- Background knowledge
- Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
- Emotional intensity
- Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.
Themes
- Coming of age
- Family
- Friendship
- Mortality
- Survival
- War
Content notes
- Violence
- Strong
- Sexual content
- None
- Swearing
- Mild
- Substance use
- None
- Abuse
- None
- Self-harm or suicide
- Mild
Questions readers ask
Does it give a broad history of the Bosnian War?
No, it stays close to a child's daily life in Sarajevo under siege. Food shortages, sheltering in a neighbor's cellar and longing for familiar routines shape a personal account of survival rather than a general history.
How upsetting is the wartime content?
Strong violence is central, including shelling, wartime deaths and friends killed in the Bosnian War. The intimate diary voice keeps those losses close to ordinary concerns about school, family and birthdays.
What is the diary's voice like?
Zlata addresses her diary as Mimmy, writing conversationally about immediate concerns and relationships. The tone is intimate, tense and melancholic, with school, piano lessons and birthday parties giving way to daily survival under siege.
How long is it?
About 256 pages in the Penguin Books 2006 edition.
Which edition is shown here?
Penguin Books · 2006 · Paperback. ISBN 9780143036876.
How long does it take to read Zlata's Diary?
About 5 hours at 50 pages an hour, based on the 256-page Penguin Books edition. Dense books can take longer.
About the author
Zlata Filipović
Zlata Filipović, born in 1980, is a diarist whose writing is grounded in firsthand observation. In Zlata's Diary, she records Sarajevo's passage from familiar childhood routines into siege through direct, conversational entries. Her method keeps war at the level of lived experience, tracing it through school, music, friendships, family life, scarcity, fear, and death. The diary's perspective develops with the child's awareness, making private experience the basis of her testimony.
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Edition and details
- Publisher
- Penguin Books
- Publication year
- 2006
- Format
- Paperback
- Pages
- 256
- ISBN
- 9780143036876
- Edition language
- English
- Original language
- Bosnian
- First published
- 1993
- Genres and form
- Nonfiction · Biography & Memoir · History · Young Adult · Biography and memoir · Memoir
- Editions
- 15
- Languages
- 4 (English, Spanish, French, Chinese)