Almost two decades ago, John Boyne (Dublin, 1971), an obscure Irish writer who wrote popular novels for teenagers at the time, published a novel called The Boy in the Striped Pajamas that could turn into a crossover. In the case of Harry Potter, it is eventually read by adults and reaches 11 million copies sold worldwide, which is said to happen soon. Nothing later written by Boyne came close to the phenomenon, and the author decided to present the project to the delight of his fans, despite announcing that the sequel to the hit would coincide with the end of his career. All the Broken Pieces (Salamandra / Empúries) tells the story of Gretel, the boy’s older sister who is the protagonist of that fable, a 91-year-old woman today who lives in London’s most exclusive neighborhood and hides poisonous things. The family secret of being the Auschwitz commander’s daughter.
not undisputed
Describing the friendship between a Nazi’s son, Ari boy Bruno, and a Jewish boy held in an extermination camp, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas did not remain unchallenged from the first minute, despite its worldwide success. from the broadcast. He was accused of naively approaching the Holocaust by fictionally redesigning a camp like Auschwitz without the imposing barbed wire fences, watchtowers, and guards every few feet, maximizing the reader’s disbelief, forcing him to accept a 9-year camp. -The old boy thought his weak neighbors were simple farmers years ago. Another stubborn accusation is that he minimized the moral responsibility of the German people to Nazism. Two years ago, Auschwitz Memorial warned that “anyone who studies or teaches the history of the Holocaust should avoid the novel,” considering that despite its historical inaccuracies, the novel is widely used for academic purposes all over the world. ».
This time, all the broken pieces, designed for an adult audience, fit the plot into the story before it transforms, but the writer, who is aware of the reproaches, is tasked with clinching the “responsibility” that every writer must carry to the epilogue. Against the Holocaust.
The author explains that Boyne is from Adelaide, one of the Australian cities where he usually escapes the cold and wet Dublin winter each year. You feel misunderstood. “I didn’t write a textbook or college work, but I did write a fable that would get kids into it and encourage them to access nonfiction books like The Diary of Anne Frank, Primo Levi’s memoirs, or Elie. Wiesel’s Night writers who understand what’s going on much better than I do” refused to encourage or demand that his book be used in schools, while “I hope the teachers who use this book explain that things didn’t happen. just like that” – and regrets that his critics “do not appreciate the effort to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive among young people; this is the hard work of the Memorial.”
shield of silence
The character of Gretel, the protagonist of All the Broken Pieces, who was 12 when the events described in the previous novel took place, can be interpreted as an example of how a large part of the German people confront their past by hiding behind silence. Although Gretel cannot be blamed, she hid her past after the war, thus preventing the information she had from coming to light.
“It also represents something that has always haunted me and seeps into many of my novels, and that is complicity. I’m not as interested in people who commit crimes as people who know that evil and decide to do nothing,” Boyne explains, attributing this aspect to his personal history. He was one of many children who were abused at school—a common illness in Ireland;
The author, who belongs to a generation able to talk to the last survivors of the camps, displays a compassionate look towards the children and grandchildren of Nazi leaders, and children whose parents put on the wrong side. history. “In such a society, children and adolescents had no choice, many of them almost by force became part of the Hitler Youth. Günter Grass and XVI.