Groupthink was the basis of the Nazi regime; indoctrination gave it its power,” he writes. “In a civilised society - and, for that matter, in publishing - the freedom to express one’s opinions without being vilified or threatened with erasure must be upheld.” Not everyone agrees. A 2016 study published by the Centre for Holocaust Education, a British organization housed at University College London, found that 35% of British teachers used his book in their Holocaust lesson plans, and that 85% of students who had consumed any kind of media related to the Holocaust had either read the book or seen its movie adaptation.

The story is told from the point of view of 92 year old Gretel who has lived her life hiding her dark and disturbing past. She doesn’t talk about her escape from Germany or her post war years in France. She keeps the fact that she is the daughter of one of the commandant leaders in a notorious Nazi Concentration Camp well hidden and lives a quiet life in her apartment until a young family moves into the apartment below her and Gretel forms a new friendship with Henry their young son. 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’s latest novel is a sequel of sorts to 2006’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, perhaps his best known work. Written for children, it was essentially a fable, about Bruno, the young son of an Auschwitz commander, who makes friends with Shmuel, a Jewish boy, through the fence that surrounds the camp. Although the book has been accused of spreading misinformation about the Holocaust, it remains an involving account of humanity amid horror.

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With the rise in antisemitism, such as it is in this country, and that so often manifests through trivialization, distortion and denial of the Holocaust, this book could potentially do more harm than good,” Centre for Holocaust Education researcher Ruth-Anne Lenga concluded at the end of her 2016 study.

John Boyne holds up his phone proudly to show the display. It reads: “143 days since escaped hell.”

All the Broken Places

Absolutely not. Children’s and young adult publishing is in the worst place it has been in my lifetime,” he says.