Sukant Deepak
Jaipur, Feb 4 (IANS) John Boyne, the Irish author of the recently released ‘All the Broken Places’, a sequel to his bestselling ‘The Boy in Striped Pajamas’, also adapted into a major film feels that it is high time that German people stop feeling guilty about the crimes they did not commit.
“The German people have confronted the crimes of their ancestors over the years and it is unfair to hold them responsible for that. Also, let us not forget that almost every country has encountered a dark period in its history,” says this writer of 14 novels for adults, six novels for younger readers, two novellas and one collection of short stories.
His novels are published in over 50 languages.
While ‘The Boy in Striped Pajamas’, which was also adapted into a film by Mark Herman deals with the friendship between a Jewish boy living in the concentration camp and the son of a Nazi commander while being oblivious to the reality of the situation, ‘All the Broken Places’ tackles the tale of Gretel Frensby, who does not talk about her father, a commandant of a concentration camp.
Boyne told IANS at the ongoing Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) that the sequel was conceived in 2004.
“I had kept a lot of notes which came extremely handy. The book continued to change as I wrote it. Frankly, this was not the book I had planned to write,” he says.
Adding that ‘The Boy in Striped Pajamas’ had a certain naivety to it, he smiles: “This one is the work of an experienced writer.”
Talk to him about the fact the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum ‘warned’ that the book “should be avoided by anyone who studies or teaches the history of the Holocaust”, Boyne says that he felt surprised by the ‘advisory’ as he never claimed it to be a textbook or that it should be prescribed in schools.
“It is a novel, when did I say that it should be taught? That is why I found their statement quite unfair.”
For someone who faced a lot of social media backlash for his ‘My Brother’s Name is Jessica’ narrated through the eyes of a boy experiencing his sibling’s transition, Boyle was accused of decentring the novel’s trans character.
There were even calls for a boycott.
That is when he decided to go off social media.
“It was a depressing time. People who had not even read the book were commenting on it. There were death threats and abuses hurled. Now I use social media only to make announcements,” he said.
Boyne, who has also written novellas like ‘Water’ (also ‘Earth’, ‘Air’ and ‘Fire’), in which a character from one becomes the narrator in the next one says that he is working on the last one.
“They are just forty thousand words. I feel it is always a challenge to tell a story in fewer words.”
