THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS: A Fable
By John Boyne
David Fickling Press. £10.99
ISBN 0385 60940X
I got into a conversation about this book on the train. It ran: ‘Strange title!’ ‘Its a children’s book.’ ... ‘What’s it about?’ ‘Well, the holocaust, really.’ ‘For children? Weird.’
Bruno is nine years old, living in a luxurious Berlin house, until page two, when he is told to help the maid with the packing, for they are moving. They are going to ‘Out-With’ as ‘the Fury’ wants father to do an important job there. The adult reader will understand the poignant mis-hearings straight away, but for my eight-year-old daughter things unfolded more slowly; indeed, she read the first three quarters as an adventure, excited about what would happen next and laughing at Bruno’s jokes, only slowly realising that the hundreds of ‘sons, fathers, grandfathers’ in striped pyjamas, who Bruno sees behind a fence and who Bruno’s father refers to as ‘not really people’, are the victims of Hitler’s Final Solution.
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