Wild child of a different stripe

Noah Barleywater Runs Away

BREAKTHROUGH books can be a blessing and a curse. That’s something John Boyne, the 39-year-old author whose novel, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, sold five million copies and was made into a Miramax movie after its 2006 release, surely knows better than most.

Boyne reamed off the first draft of “Striped Pyjamas”, as he refers to it, in a delirious two-and-a-half days. It catapulted the Dubliner to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, spending 80 weeks at No 1 in Ireland. But it also left him with a dilly of a pickle. How to follow it up?