The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas: John Boyne’s Fable of a Friendship Across a Fence
The life of Bruno, a nine-year-old boy living with his family in Berlin, changes when his father’s work takes them to a bleak place far from the city. There he meets Shmuel, the boy in the striped pyjamas, and their friendship begins in one of the darkest periods in human history. John Boyne’s 2006 novel tells the story of the Holocaust through the eyes of a child who does not understand what he is seeing.
Author: John Boyne
Title: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2006)
Format: English paperback (Definitions), 256 pages
Scope: Short novel, subtitled "a fable", set during the Second World War
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/1909531197 (ASIN 1909531197)
What Bruno Does Not See
Bruno cannot make sense of his new surroundings, and the attitude of his twelve-year-old sister does not help. He lives surrounded by his father’s soldiers, and to his surprise the man who peels vegetables in the kitchen seems once to have been a doctor. The reader understands long before Bruno does, and that gap is where the book’s power lies.
A Fable for Adults
Although it is an invented story, the book was translated into many languages and became a bestseller in Boyne’s native Ireland and beyond. Despite its young narrator it is aimed at adult readers; its brevity and plain language make it easy to read.
Like Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in The Little Prince, Boyne uses a child to reveal the flaws of the adult world. The innocence of the two boys makes possible a friendship that Nazi Germany would never have recognised, far from the social conventions and discrimination of the time.
Words a Child Mishears
Much of the book’s effect comes from Bruno’s misunderstandings. He calls the camp "Out-With" and the leader who comes to dinner "the Fury", and he assumes that the people behind the fence, all in the same striped clothes, must be farmers. Readers understand what Bruno cannot, and that gap between his innocence and our knowledge is what makes the ending so hard to bear.
How It Was Written
John Boyne, an Irish novelist born in 1971, has said he wrote the first draft in about two and a half days, in a single burst, and the book’s simple shape reflects that. It became an international bestseller and was filmed in 2008. Many years later he returned to the family in All the Broken Places (2022), which follows Bruno’s older sister, Gretel, as an old woman still haunted by what her father did.
A Fable, Not a History
The book calls itself a fable, and it should be read as one. Historians and Holocaust educators have criticised it for historical implausibility: a boy like Shmuel is unlikely to have survived long enough in Auschwitz to spend afternoons at a fence, and some worry that readers may take it as fact. Teachers who use it often pair it with testimony such as Anne Frank’s diary or with historical sources, which is the best way to read it.
Who It Is For
Readers from about twelve upwards, and adults. It is short and simple in language, which makes it accessible to learners of English too, but its subject calls for discussion afterwards, especially with younger readers.
Gretel and the Family
Bruno’s family matters too. His twelve-year-old sister Gretel, whom he calls a "Hopeless Case", absorbs the regime’s propaganda from a young officer; his mother grows increasingly unhappy at what she sees. Through them the book shows how ordinary households adapted to evil.
Why Read It Now
The publisher famously refuses to summarise the book, saying only that you will travel with Bruno until you reach a fence. That is good advice. Read it knowing as little as possible, and then, perhaps, watch the 2008 film adaptation.
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