The Irish author, who wrote the blockbuster but controversial The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, took down Twitter after it was revealed he was writing a sequel.
Earlier this year, 51-year-old John Boyne announced the release of All Broken Places, the sequel to his 2006 best-selling book, which chronicles the friendship between Shmuel, a Jewish boy in a concentration camp, and Bruno, a concentration camp son. SS officer. in September
When The Boy in the Striped Pajamas was released and made into a movie in 2008, some said the work could ignite Nazi sympathies.
In 2020, the Auschwitz Memorial denounced Boyne’s novel, writing that “anyone who reads or teaches Holocaust history should avoid the boy in the striped pajamas.”
Many claimed that they had never heard of the Holocaust, impossibly because the German family featured in the book was said to have taught Bruno, the son of a high-ranking Nazi, to “hate the Jews.”
Three years ago, Dublin-based Boyne faced new criticism when she was accused of “misrepresenting” transgender people in her book My Brother’s Name Jessica.
This week, a bookstore employee in Ireland announced that he was “throwing” copies of another Boyne book, The Echo Chamber, in protest.
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John Boyne (pictured), who wrote the 2006 New York Times bestselling The Boy in the Striped Pijamas, announced that he was leaving Twitter after homophobic harassment, which later became a movie. In recent weeks, she has faced opposition to her announcement that the sequel to the novel will be released later this year.
The film adaptation of 2008’s best-selling book sparked controversy, with some claiming that the work documenting the friendship between a Jewish boy in a concentration camp and the son of an SS officer was sympathetic to the Nazis.
In an article he wrote for The Independent Irishman, stating that he left Twitter due to homophobic harassment on the social media platform, the author stated that he was excited at the “permanent deletion of his account from the internet, my followers disappearing forever”, noting that my blue checkmark has been fixed”.
The sequel to The Boy in the Striped Pajamas follows the life story of Gretel, Bruno’s older sister.
The protest on Twitter gained momentum after it was learned that Boyne had left the platform.
@conorsmith said: “I work in a well-known bookstore in Dublin and threw away all copies of John Boyne’s book that reached us. My manager knows this but can’t do anything to stop me because he knows I’m on Twitter and I’m going to let him go.”
A critical colleague @bethanyrutter wrote: “I can’t believe how much of a betrayal this has been for him – to get rid of this massive (possibly unintentional) disinformation campaign, but also to be rewarded with the opportunity by the publisher. Everything? How many are complicit in the process?’
In 2019, outraged activists called for Boyne’s book about a transgender child to be boycotted because he was not transgender and therefore was not qualified to write about it.
My Brother’s Name is Jessica revolves around Sam Waver, who reveals that his older brother Jason has turned into a woman.
One reader wrote: ‘John is not trans, so this is not the story he’s going to write. When it comes to change, the transgender person should be at the center. Not his siblings.
However, many defended Boyne’s right to create fiction. Writer Eileen Wharton said at the time: “Writers use their imaginations. This is what we do! I write from many different perspectives and may not have experienced what I wrote.
The author said in an article he wrote for the Irish Independent this week that he left the social media platform because of homophobic harassment.
“I’m talking to people who have experienced this. I’m doing other research that I’m sure John did.
The author defended her decision to write a trans story even though she is not trans. “Literature is always open to discussion, but discourse must remain polite and of mutual respect,” he said.
The novel tells the story of Bruno, the nine-year-old son of a Nazi commander in Auschwitz, who befriends a Jewish boy named Shmuel from the camp gate.
Bruno doesn’t know anything about the atrocities in the camp, nor does his sister and mother.
At the end of the book, Bruno sneaks into the camp, but is taken with Shmuel to a gas chamber and killed.
Past controversies: Boyne was criticized in 2019 after publishing My Brother’s Name Jessica, a novel revolving around the transgender character’s brother. Right: The cover of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, which some say is a Nazi sympathizer
An article for the Jewish educational community Kveller last month Noting the historical inaccuracies surrounding the book, including the fact that Bruno and his family had not heard of the Holocaust in the novel, all Germans would have heard of the war and the Nazi party’s hatred of the Jewish people.
Bruno, a German boy and son of a high-ranking Nazi, is said to have been a legal member of the Hitler Youth and learned to hate Jews.
Criticizing the book’s tragic climax, the same article wrote: “We are left with the twisted morality that the accidental death of one kind of child is somehow a ‘right’ to the death of millions of Jews.
And since the online blog Learning about the Holocaust focuses on Bruno, his family, and their response to his tragic death, he cautioned that the great tragedy of the Holocaust was never fully covered in the book.
In 2020, the Auschwitz Memorial denounced Boyne’s novel, writing that “anyone who reads or teaches Holocaust history should avoid the boy in the striped pajamas.”
However, a study by the UCL Holocaust Education Center found that the book was used by 35 percent of British teachers as a way to introduce children to the Holocaust story.
The same survey found that Anne Frank’s diary was read 59.1 percent more by 12- to 18-year-old students.
In defense of his book, Boyne said in March 2022 that fiction cannot actually be wrong.
Puffin Books has been contacted for comment.
Source: Daily Mail
