Description

A simply written but harrowing story in which there are no atrocities, no violence, the war is implied without being described, and precisely because everything is only implied, the more powerful are its suggestions. It is a book that is not forgotten, but lingers long to occupy the mind with questions of innocence and friendship, and of the evil we often face unprepared.

Nine-year-old Bruno doesn't know what the Holocaust is and has no idea of the atrocities his country has inflicted on people in other European countries. All he knows is that he has to leave his cozy home in Berlin and move to some remote part of the country to a secluded house where he has no one to play with and is downright dying of boredom. But this terrible boredom ends the day he meets Shmuel, a boy who leads a strange parallel existence on the other side of the wire fence next door and who, like the rest of the people there, walks around wearing striped pajamas.

“The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is an unusual, rare work: a novel that touches children and adults alike. A worthy successor to masterpieces like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Saviour in the Rye, books about the loss of innocence.”-Barry Forchot

“An unusual tale of friendship and the horrors of war told through the eyes of two teenage boys. A harrowing text created by a literary talent of the highest order.”- IrishIndependent

John Boyne was born in Dublin in 1971. He studied English Literature at Trinity College. In 1995 he specialised in creative writing at the University of East Anglia. He has six novels under his belt, the best-selling of which is The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, translated into 33 languages.