John Boyne has written a sequel to 'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas'
John Boyne's new book is a sequel to
John Boyne has written a sequel to his 2006 Holocaust novel .
The novel will be published by Transworld on September 15, 2022.
Titled , it will follow Gretel, the older sister of the nine-year-old protagonist in the original book.
is the most translated Irish novel of all time and has been adapted for film, theatre, ballet and opera. According to Penguin, the novel has sold 9m copies worldwide.
Commenting on the news today, John Boyne said in the years since the book's release in 2006, he has regularly made notes in a file called ’Gretel’s Story’.
“It was a book I hoped to write one day, telling the story of Bruno’s older sister Gretel who, at the end of her life, looks back at the experience she was part of and is forced to examine her conscience regarding her guilt and complicity in those times.
“During lockdown, I decided it was time to write that novel and ’Gretel’s Story’ became It spans from 1946 to today and takes place in Paris, Sydney and London.”
Boyne said Gretel is 91-years-old in the sequel “but still struggles with her memories and her grief”.
“I hope all those readers who embraced my earlier novel will be keen to discover what happened to Bruno’s family after he made that fateful journey to the other side of the fence and witness the consequences in the devastation of the post-war world.”
Earlier this year, the Auschwitz Memorial’s Twitter account tweeted that “should be avoided by anyone who studies or teaches about the history of the Holocaust”.
The tweet linked an article from titled ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas may fuel dangerous Holocaust fallacies.’
Responding to criticism of the book on today, Boyne said “fiction can’t be factually inaccurate”
The author maintained that the Auschwitz Memorial did not criticise the book as a novel, rather they didn’t recommend that it be used in schools as a history lesson.
“But we do use in classrooms to talk about the Russian Revolution,” he pointed out.
