Boyne learns Google is recipe for disaster
HE’S an award-winning author who has tackled topics from the Holocaust to transgender rights.
But Dublin novelist John Boyne was left red-faced after he accidentally published a recipe from a fantasy video game in his latest novel.
Boyne clearly did not fact-check ahead of publishing A Traveller At The Gates Of Wisdom after googling for how red clothes dye is traditionally made.
The author, best known for his 2006 novel The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, appears to have been presented with a guide from gaming website Polygon on how to dye clothes in the 2017 game The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild.
In the novel Boyne, 49, describes the ingredients used, which include ‘the leaves of the silent princess plant, Octorok eyeball, swift violet, thistle and hightail lizard’ as well as ‘the tail of the red lizalfos and four Hylian shrooms’.
The only problem was most of these ingredients are not available on Earth, where Boyne’s novel is set, but in the fictional world of Hyrule from the Zelda games.
One fan told Boyne on social media that the ingredients used in the book may have been the result of hasty googling.
Boyne replied: ‘That is actually kinda hilarious. I’m totally willing to own it. Something tells me I’ll be telling this anecdote on stage for many years to come...’
Boyne, whose 2006 novel The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas was adapted into a film, said he ‘must have just googled it’ and joked he will need to add Zelda to the acknowledgements. He also stated he would not change the recipe for the paperback edition. ‘Yeah, I’ll leave it as it is,’ he tweeted. ‘I actually think it’s quite funny and you’re totally right. I don’t remember but I must have just googled it. Hey, sometimes you just gotta throw your hands up and say, “yup! My bad!”’
Boyne, right, added: ‘Someone remind me to add Zelda to the acknowledgements page when the paperback of TRAVELLER is published... oh lord...’ The Trinity College Dublin graduate, who previously deleted his Twitter account, claiming social media harassment, also told one user to ‘lighten up’ after they criticised him for not looking ‘beyond the very first Google result’.