When John Boyne (Dublin, 1971) finished writing The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, it was clear to him that one day or another he would return to that story. He was convinced that he would do it when he was older. His last book, the finishing touch. But then the pandemic hit and he felt an overwhelming need to write the sequel and go back to those characters that helped launch his career. “I am a person of impulses, I write about something when I feel that it is the moment”, he admits to La Vanguardia during a telematic meeting from Australia, a country that takes on special prominence in All the broken pieces (Salamandra / Empúries), which arrives this week at bookstores, and from where he is already writing his next novel.
Many readers have been surprised that the famous book has a second part, since many years have passed since its publication and the story seemed closed. But the Irish author assures this newspaper that the plot could even lead to a third book. “A part of me has the feeling that it’s done, but the other part knows that there is a character in this universe who has several loose ends, which is Lieutenant Kotler, one of the soldiers in the Auschwitz camp. It might be interesting to know what happens with someone who actually perpetrated those crimes. Do you feel guilty? Do you live peacefully?”
Who does not live quietly is Gretel, the protagonist of this sequel. She is Bruno’s sister and the daughter of one of the greatest leaders of the Nazi regime. Her story has been cooking for years. “When I finished the draft of the first book in April 2004, I created a folder on my computer with the name of Gretel and since then I have been filling it with ideas and information that I have been collecting. I kept taking notes about who I thought I would be today. But I decided not to write anything at that time because I thought it convenient to wait until I was an older and more mature author. That’s why I imagined myself writing this novel as an old man. But things are going as they are and I’ve done it at the age of 51. I think my writing it is less naive now”, she confesses.
The plot alternates present and past. Devastated Paris after World War II and post-pandemic London. This is a formula that the Irish author uses in several of his books as he likes to “see how past and current times influence each other.” In addition, he “wanted to visit Gretel at different times in her life and see how at each of those stages she consumed him with guilt for what she had done to her family.” A guilt that also leads him to flee to Australia, “one of the most distant places to which a European can escape. But not even on the other side of the globe can he get rid of his past.”
Boyne clarifies that “at no time did I want to present her as a victim because she is not. But there are so many people implicated in the Holocaust that I think the story of each one of them, from whatever side, is worth telling. Then it will be the reader who decides if she is worthy of reading it or not. It seemed interesting to me to explore the life of a young woman whose father has committed a large number of crimes in a concentration camp. How does that affect your life and relationships with other people, their mental health?
What is evident from the first page is that the family has a terrible time accepting that their former life of privilege is gone. The savings don’t take long to be consumed but that doesn’t seem to be enough for Gretel and her mother Elsa to get to work. Understanding that the tables have turned is something that will be hard for them to see at first. Not so your neighbors will not take long to let you know.
Boyne is aware that expressing his opinion, whatever it may be, will end up putting him in a garden. Even so, he dares to give it: “Gretel should not be tried for the crimes committed by her parents, considering that she was twelve years old when everything happened. Instead, when the war ended, she could have provided information to the liberators of the camps. It would have been useful for the families of the victims or the survivors of the camps themselves. But she decided not to do it and prioritize her own safety and reputation. And of that she is guilty ”.
To mend his mistake, the author advances, “he tries to make one last gesture that gives meaning to his life and tries to help and save a child. That doesn’t excuse her from her past, but it’s her way of asking the world for forgiveness, even if that’s not exactly an apology. She stops receiving forgiveness, first you have to ask for it and Gretel has spent her life denying it. What happens is that when she has found the opportunity to do something that she considers similar, she has done it”.
There are several challenges Boyne faced while writing, but he insists that “the biggest challenge was trying to make this as emotional a book as the first. I’d like people to finish reading this and have the feeling that this book is a worthy successor to the first novel”, he concludes.
