The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

Written by John Boyne

Read by Michael Maloney

Published by Random House

Price: 12.99 (http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/audio/)

One tip before we start, come to this book with the ears of a nine-year-old child and you’ll get it. This is what John Boyne did when he wrote it, choosing a voice of innocence and naiveté to tell what is, fundamentally, a story of horror.

Slotting this CD in gave me a sense of deja-vu. It’s set in Nazi Germany, just like Markus Zukas’ The Book Thief. Bruno is a nine-year-old German boy whose father is one of Hitler’s top Commandants. Hitler “The Fury” has chosen Bruno’s father for a very important job, one that moves the whole family from their fashionably large house in Berlin, to a much smaller and dilapidated house inside the border fence at Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration camp. (A word that Bruno and his sister Gretel, "a hopeless case”, pronounce as “Out-with”.)

Michael Maloney, our reader, is a highly acclaimed actor who has often trodden the boards with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He captures Bruno’s childishness, especially in scenes where Bruno is talking to Shmuel, the little boy born on the same day as Bruno, who lives on the other side of the compound fence.

Bruno pines for his old home and three best friends in Berlin. ‘Out-with’ (which is never pronounced correctly throughout the story), is a desolate area where there is nothing to do and no-one to play with. Bruno's sitiuation is slowly revealed by Bruno's own revelations. He's oblivious to the appalling cruelties being inflicted on the people on the other side of the fence, and can only see the fact that there are other children there that he is not allowed to play with.

One afternoon he goes exploring and meets Shmuel who is sitting on the other side of the barbed wire fence. Bruno is excited about making a friend, and doesn’t see him as the morbidly skinny, grey-faced little boy. Although, he does note Shmuel’s striped pyjamas. Over the next few months they talk through the fence. Shmuel tells Bruno about how he was transported on a packed train from a ghetto in Poland. But, Bruno cannot comprehend Shmuel’s situation, and selfishly talks about himself, his big house and what he is having for dinner that evening. To these comments, Shmuel is always very quiet.

I was moved by the narrative, by Bruno and Shmuel’s parallel existence and the fact that as an adult, I knew where the men and women Shmuel spoke about disappeared to. I also knew what the ‘important job’ was that his father was doing. It left me feeling incredulous that, where there should be hate, there is only curiosity aimed at ‘The Fuhrer’ when he dines with the family. The only voice that does speak up with disgust at the Commandant’s job is his mother-in-law. She later dies estranged from the family for voicing her opinion.

Karma catches up with the Commandant when Bruno goes on his ultimate adventure on the other side of the fence. He swaps clothes, leaving his own in a pile on his side of the fence. What is heart wrenching is the fact that Shmuel’s father has disappeared, and we know that he has been taken to a room with a few hundred others and gassed. The two boys, don’t realise they will end up with the same fate.