JOHN BOYNE

The author of the massive bestseller The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas returns with a sequel

What’s the premise of All the Broken Places?

Gretel, the older sister of Bruno from The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, looks back on her life at the age of 91. She is still coming to terms with the great shame of her family history, as well as her own complicity in the events of the Holocaust.

Is there a book that made you love writing?

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. I read it in school and it had a profound effect on me. The intricacy of the characterisation, the cruelty at the heart of the story, and of course the wild, windy moors of Yorkshire. What’s the best book you’ve read? The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley. An elderly man recalls his childhood infatuation with a friend’s older sister, and the damage it did to his life. I’ve written quite a few novels narrated by elderly people whose lives have been shaped by a mistake they made when they were young, and I think they’ve all been influenced by my great love for this book.

A book that had a pivotal impact on your life?

Night by Elie Wiesel, which I read aged 15. It was the catalyst for my lifelong fascination with, and study of, the Holocaust. Reading it led me to so many other works of non-fiction that explore the subject, as well as novels, films and documentaries.

I’ve never been able to get through Middlemarch, although I’ve tried several times!

A book you wish you had read but haven’t got to? Ulysses by James Joyce. As an Irish writer, it’s to my

The book you couldn’t finish?

shame that I’ve never read it, but I’ve just never felt the pull towards it. I’ve read several of Joyce’s books but this one seems like it will sit on my shelves all my life, its pages never turned.

The book you are most proud to have written? The Heart’s Invisible Furies. It’s the book that readers talk to me about most and they, like I, feel a great connection to my optimistic hero, Cyril Avery, as well as his eccentric adoptive parents, Charles and Maude Avery. I think I managed to combine tragedy and comedy quite well in this book.

Your earliest reading memory? Enid Blyton’s Noddy books. I was utterly obsessed with Noddy and, for a time, had my own Noddy outfit that I refused to take off.

What book do you re-read? I almost never re-read books. There’s too many unread books to read. However, I’ve read John Irving’s The Cider House Rules twice. He’s my favourite contemporary writer.

What books are on your bedside table? William Boyd’s The Romantic, and John Banville’s The Singularities

What are you writing now?

A screenplay! My first attempt at adapting another writer’s work. It’s quite exciting to try something different and I’m enjoying the challenge.

All the Broken

Places by John

Boyne,

Doubleday, $33