Product Description

The story of "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" is very difficult to describe. Usually we give some clues about the book on the cover, but in this case we think that would spoil the reading of the book. We think it is important that you start to read without knowing what it is about. If you do start to read this book, you will go on a journey with a nine-year-old boy called Bruno. (Though this isn't a book for nine-year-olds.) And sooner or later you will arrive with Bruno at a fence. We hope you never have to cross such a fence.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #940 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
John Boyne's The Boy in Striped Pyjamas will no doubt acquire many readers as a result of the subsequent film of the novel, but viewers of the latter would do themselves a favour by going back to the spare and powerfully affecting original book. Bruno is nine years old, and the Nazis’ horrific Final Solution to the ‘Jewish Problem’ means nothing to him. He's completely unaware of the barbarity of Germany under Hitler, and is more concerned by his move from his well-appointed house in Berlin to a far less salubrious area where he finds himself with nothing to do. Then he meets a boy called Shmuel who lives a very different life from him -- a life on the opposite side of a wire fence. And Shmuel is the eponymous boy in the striped pyjamas, as are all the other people on the other side of the fence. The friendship between the two boys begins to grow, but for Bruno it is a journey from blissful ignorance to a painful knowledge. And he will find that this learning process carries, for him, a daunting price.

A legion of books have attempted to evoke the horrors of the Second World War, but in this concise and perfectly honed novel, all of the effects that John Boyne creates are allowed to make a maximum impact in a relatively understated fashion (given the enormity of the situation here). The Boy in Striped Pyjamas is also that rare thing: a novel which can affect both children and adults equally; a worthy successor, in fact, to such masterpieces as To Kill a Mockingbird and The Catcher in the Rye -- both, of course, books, dealing (as does this one) with the loss of innocence. --Barry Forshaw

From the Inside Flap
The story of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is very difficult to describe. Usually we give some clues about the book on the cover, but in this case we think that would spoil the reading of the book. We think it is important that you start to read without knowing what it is about.

If you do start to read this book, you will go on a journey with a nine-year-old boy called Bruno. (Though this isn't a book for nine-year-olds.) And sooner or later you will arrive with Bruno at a fence.

Fences like this exist all over the world. We hope you never have to cross such a fence.

From the Back Cover
The story of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is very difficult to describe. Usually we give some clues about the book on the cover, but in this case we think that would spoil the reading of the book. We think it is important that you start to read without knowing what it is about.

If you do start to read this book, you will go on a journey with a nine-year-old boy called Bruno. (Though this isn’t a book for nine-year-olds.) And sooner or later you will arrive with Bruno at a fence. Fences like this exist all over the world. We hope you never have to cross such a fence.

‘Stays just ahead of its readers before delivering its killer punch in the final pages’
INDEPENDENT

‘A book that lingers in the mind for quite some time’
IRISH TIMES

Customer Reviews

Excellent book - the more you know the more it means
This is an excellent book, written from a child's perspective so I can imagine that the reading of it as a child is completely different from that as an adult and a history student. Despite other reviewers comments you don't see the ending coming or imagine how you will feel about it. This book will stay with you. Read and enjoy. The tag-line reads "a tale of innocence in a time of ignorance" and so it is and so it still is and always will be. The lesson of history is that we never learn the lesson of history, lets hope books like this can help us.

Clever and gripping
I thought this book was cleverly written, from the view of a 9 year old boy - it is only because we have historical hindsight of the events that are being described by the boy, who does not understand, that the full story plays out in your imagination as the story unfolds.
I did not expect the story to end the way it did. I was gripped.

Try something different
This book was recommended to me and when I eventually got round to buying it, I was hooked fairly quickly and finished it in a couple of days. There are some annoying repetitions with words which are used as substitutes for the real-life words, but apart from that it was a very easy book to read. I will not say that the book was enjoyable in the normal sense, as the subject matter is one which cannot be enjoyed, but it was a really good, easy to read book with a twist which just took my breath away.