by John Boyne
Part of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
First published 2006
Bruno is nine years old and furious. His family has uprooted him from their comfortable home in Berlin and moved to a bleak, isolated house in the middle of nowhere. His father has a new job, though Bruno doesn't fully grasp what that means. From his bedroom window he can see a vast camp behind a long fence, filled with people in striped pajamas. He is bored and lonely and forbidden to explore. So he explores anyway. Walking the length of the fence one afternoon, Bruno meets Shmuel, a boy his own age sitting on the other side of the wire. They begin to talk. They begin to meet. A friendship grows in the space between two worlds that have no business touching. Bruno understands almost nothing about where he lives or what his father does there. That ignorance is the engine of the story. The reader sees what Bruno cannot. The fence is real. The two boys on either side of it are real. What happens when Bruno decides that friendship matters more than the rules is the heart of this book.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, coming-of-age, young-adult, historical-drama
Vibes: dark, haunting, intimate, poignant, thought-provoking, tragic
Tropes: coming-of-age, forbidden-friendship, innocent-perspective, tragic-ending
Setting: Berlin, Auschwitz
Period: World War II, 1940s
224 pages · Hardcover · David Fickling Books
Content warnings: child-death, death, war