Writer John Boyne quits Twitter in row over new book
WRITER John Boyne, the author of The Boy In the Striped Pyjamas which sparked controversy over accusations of Nazi sympathising, has quit Twitter following anger online over the book’s sequel.
Mr Boyne, 51, announced earlier this year that All The Broken Places, a follow-up to his 2006 bestseller about a friendship between a Jewish boy in a concentration camp and the son of an SS officer, will be published in September.
When The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas was released, and made into a film in 2008, some said the work could encourage sympathy for the Nazis, with one critic suggesting the Dublin author had set ‘Holocaust education back by decades’.
In 2020, the Auschwitz Memorial condemned Mr Boyne’s novel, writing: ‘The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas should be avoided by anyone who studies or teaches about the history of the Holocaust.’
Others said the fact that the German family in the book hadn’t heard of the Holocaust is impossible, saying that, as the son of a high-ranking Nazi, Bruno, would have been taught ‘to hate Jewish people’.
The author declared in a newspaper article last week that he had left Twitter because of homophobic abuse on the social media platform, saying he was excited that his ‘account will be permanently wiped from the internet, my followers lost forever, my blue tick dissolved.’
One critic of Mr Boyne wrote on Twitter: ‘I can’t fathom what a betrayal this is for him to not only – get away – with this enormous (potentially inadvertent) disinformation campaign but to be rewarded by the publishing industry with the opportunity to do it all over again? How many people are complicit in this process?’
Three years ago, Mr Boyne faced another backlash when furious activists called for a boycott of his novel about a transgender boy, My Brother’s Name Is Jessica. That book centres around Sam Waver whose older brother Jason explains that he is transitioning into a woman. One reader wrote: ‘John is not trans therefore this isn’t his story to write.’
The sequel to The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas follows the story of Gretel, Bruno’s older sister, in later
life.
‘Permanently wiped’