In 2012, I was awarded the Hennessy Literary ‘Hall of Fame’ Award for my body of work. I’ve also won 4 Irish Book Awards, and many international literary awards, including the Que Leer Award for Novel of the Year in Spain and the Gustav Heinemann Peace Prize in Germany. In 2015, I was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of East Anglia. John Boyne does a great job in not connecting the dots. He lets readers contemplate their own conclusions: I respect him for it…..

If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. If every man is guilty of all the good he did not do, as Voltaire suggested, then I have spent a lifetime convincing myself that I am innocent of all the bad.' The Boy with the Striped Pyjamas

That’s why we started the Times of Israel eleven years ago - to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.

For all the mistakes in her life, for all her complicity in evil, and for all her regrets, I believe that Gretel’s story is also worth telling,” Boyne writes in an author’s note. “It is up to the reader to decide whether it is worth reading.” For this reader, alas, the answer is no. Whether our sympathies lie with Gretel’s first-person account is moot because the characters are too thinly drawn to evoke emotion either way. Other shortcomings include clunky plot devices, implausible dialogue, an unnecessary twist and a preposterous ending. The problem with All the Broken Places is less whether Gretel’s story is worth telling than how it’s told. Gretel Fernsby will prove to be one of the most complicated characters in recent times. We'll meet her at the age of ninety-one living in the upscale section of Mayfair in London. She's been a widow for some time after the passing of her husband Edgar. But her son, Caden, wishes for his mother to sell her flat. After all, he's on his fourth marriage and could use the cash. Gretel refuses to even consider selling. Now a widow in her 90s, Gretel is living in London’s Mayfair, nursing a small fortune and the poisonous secret of her death camp father. German guilt John Boyne was born in Ireland in 1971. He is the author of eleven novels for adults, five for younger readers and a collection of short stories. His 2006 novel The Boy In the Striped Pajamas sold 9 million copies worldwide and has been adapted for cinema, theatre, ballet and opera. John has won three Irish Book Awards and many other international literary awards and his novels are published in over 50 languages. He lives in Dublin. I find John Boyne to be a superb storyteller, asking thought provoking questions of the reader, and creating a difficult but likeable character who has such a dubious past. Reading a novel is an act of empathy and though I found myself struggling with some parts of Gretel's story, I never found her less than human. It takes great talent to pull that off. All the Broken Places SummaryThis book is a companion to the “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”. The books share characters and events, but this can be read as a standalone. In this book, we encounter Gretel in four places, in each of which a dramatic, gut wrenching event occurs - Germany/Poland during the war, France where Gretel and her mother tried to make new lives, Australia where Gretel’s attempt to run from her history failed again and London where she found love. You can’t prepare yourself for the magnitude and emotional impact of this powerful novel.”—John Irving, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The World According to Garp Mother and I escaped Germany in early 1946, only a few months after the war ended, traveling by train from what was left of Berlin to what was left of Paris. Fifteen years old and knowing little of life, I was still coming to terms with the fact that the Axis had been defeated. Father had spoken with such confidence of the genetic superiority of our race and of the Führer's incomparable skills as a military strategist that victory had always seemed assured. And yet, somehow, we had lost. Revisiting this fictional wartime family lures readers into tangled webs of inter-generational trauma which remain even today. Family silence You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.

I don’t think that it’s my responsibility, as a novelist who didn’t write a school book, to justify its use in education when I never asked for that to happen,” he said. “If [teachers] make the choice to use a novel in their classrooms, it’s their responsibility to make sure the children know that there is a difference between what happens in this novel and what happened in real life.” But memories start to stir within Gretel when a new family moves into the flat directly below her. The nine year old boy, Henry, reminds her of the loss of her brother when he was that very same age so long ago. And as the mind plays its game of dominoes, one memory parlays upon another and dead timber rises to the surface. That’s not a novel, that’s just nonsense,” says Boyne. He gets in touch later to insist he is not referring to Sally Rooney, for whom he has warm words, but other writers who he believes produce bland writing to fit a winning publishing formula. Unlike “Striped Pajamas,” “All the Broken Places” is intended for adults. It’s filled with sex, violence, suicide attempts and bad language — and also some of the details of the Holocaust that were omitted from the first book. It mentions the Sobibor death camp by name, for example, and also takes the time to correct Bruno’s childish assumptions about the death camps being a “farm.” They feel unfairly guilty as they didn’t commit any crimes themselves but feel swept up with those who committed crimes,” says Boyne, during our Zoom call. “Gretel’s whole life has been tarnished by the actions of someone else: she feels she can’t excuse herself, but also feels ‘I have nothing to excuse myself for’.”

I believe everyone has their own line in the sand, the point beyond which they either won’t go or would be uncomfortable going. As we become more experienced and learn more, we may shift that line from ‘won’t’ to ‘uncomfortable’, depending on pressure and circumstances. Gretel insists to Kurt that she doesn’t wish the Allies had lost the war, despite the personal advantages she would have gained. Kurt doesn’t believe her: “You’re lying. . . . You are. I can see it in your face. You need to tell yourself that you wouldn’t so you can feel a sense of moral superiority, but I don’t believe you for even a moment” (253). Do you believe Gretel? Later, when Alex Darcy-Witt suggests that Gretel wishes Germany had won the war, she responds, “No one wins a war” (355). Why do you think she answers differently this time? Among my most popular books are The Heart’s Invisible Furies, A Ladder to the Sky and My Brother’s Name is Jessica. Gretel’s approach of complacent complicity serves her well until a ghost from her past brings a forced, guilty admission of how, even as a 12-year-old, she bought into the privilege and attention brought by her father’s high Nazi rank. Gretel is a 91 year old widow living in comfort in a small London apartment building. The only complications in her life are her son, who marries too frequently, and her neighbor and friend who is developing dementia. Then a film producer, his attractive wife and young son Henry move in. When it become apparent that the wife and son have good reason to fear the producer, Gretel has to decide how much she is willing to risk to help them. Gretel is not her real name and no one, including her son, knows the true story of her past. Since she and her mother fled Nazi Germany she has lived with her fear that people will learn that her father was the commandant of a concentration camp. She has also lived with the guilt of her complicity in the Nazi horrors.