Book Club & Deep Dives

October 26, 2023

This narrative trick is genius and brutal. As an adult reader, you are constantly screaming inside your head. Bruno, no! Look at the smoke from the chimney! Look at the soldier’s boots! Run away! But Bruno doesn't hear you. He is too busy being bored and looking for adventure.

A powerful and thought-provoking novel! "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" by John Boyne is a heart-wrenching story that sheds light on the atrocities of the Holocaust. Here are some useful insights and discussion points about the book:

The book is historically inaccurate. The death camps weren't places where a nine-year-old German could sit and chat with a prisoner for a year. Bruno’s naivety is unrealistic (most German children knew the fences were dangerous). And the idea that a Commandant’s son could get into the gas chamber is a fictional plot device that misrepresents how the camps were organized.

There are some books that you read. And then there are books that happen to you. John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas definitely falls into the latter category.

I picked this up thinking it was a historical fable. I closed it at 2 AM, staring at my ceiling, feeling like I had been hit by a truck. If you haven’t read it, here is the basic premise: It is 1943. Nine-year-old Bruno comes home from school in Berlin to find his family’s maid, Maria, packing his things. His father has gotten a promotion—the Fury (Bruno’s mispronunciation of "Führer") has big plans for him. They are moving to a place called "Out-With" (Auschwitz).

Forbidden to explore the "farm" (as Bruno naively calls the concentration camp), the boy grows increasingly bored and lonely. Defying his parents, he embarks on an adventure along the fence line. There, he discovers a dirt road and, eventually, a small, sad-faced boy sitting on the other side of the barbed wire.