by John Boyne
First published 2006
Nine-year-old Bruno is uprooted from his comfortable Berlin home to a desolate new house. Bored and alone, he discovers a barbed-wire fence and meets Shmuel, a boy on the other side who wears striped pajamas. As their unlikely friendship deepens, Bruno becomes unwittingly entangled in the horrors unfolding around him. A poignant tale of innocence colliding with history's cruelty.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, war
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, unlikely-friendship
Setting: Auschwitz, Poland, Europe, Berlin, Germany
Period: 1939-1945
215 pages · Paperback · David Fickling Books
Content warnings: violence