Irish novelist John Boyne published his novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas in 2006. The protagonist, eight-year-old German boy Bruno, has no idea that his father is the kommandant of a concentration camp during the second world war. Bruno and his family are sent to live with their father as he carries out his work.
Bored and lonely, Bruno ventures out to the perimeter of the camp where he meets and befriends a young Jewish camp inmate called Shmuel, the eponymous “boy in the striped pyjamas”.
The two boys – who are of equal age but vastly different backgrounds – develop an unlikely friendship. Completely failing to comprehend the gravity of Shmuel’s situation, Bruno yearns to join and play with his friend on the other side of the wire fence.
