Would Ahmadinejad Read This?

Sometimes, the fences are in the mind. And though there is a physical fence playing an important part in this modern fable, it isn’t the only line that divides Bruno, a nine-year-old, from Shmuel, also a nine-year-old, in Germany in 1943. Thrown together under unusual circumstances, the two, however, become friends, bonded by their loneliness and their innocence.

But that is not the sole moral of the story, though it is definitely the most uplifting: somewhere along the fence, far beyond watchful eyes, the two find a spot where the wires are not firmly tethered to the ground, making for enough of a gap for a nine-year-old to slip through.

So who slips through, and where? On one side are the people in the striped pyjamas, lots of them, old and young, women and men, including Shmuel’s father and grandfather. And on the other are the other sets of uniform, including Bruno’s father, commandant of ‘‘Out-With’’, as Bruno pronounces it.

Fifty-odd years after the Holocaust, spin-off literature and cinema continues to be a thriving industry in Europe, a sure-shot for column centimetres and cable television soundbites. Last year, if Ellen Feldman’s The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank was published to rave reviews on either side of the Atlantic, a few years ago, Life is Beautiful was the flavour of the Oscar season.

With the subject matter an emotive fountainhead, it’s the treatment that makes the difference. Despite its slew of Oscars, Life is Beautiful was often panned for its pronounced American bias and its unsubtle screenplay. And Feldman’s unexpected contemporising of the Anne Frank myth gave the book an edge rarely seen in sequels.

This is, perhaps, the only point where John Boyne falters. The storyline is simple, the language used even more so. But he overloads—okay, just a bit—on the understatement. Check this: ‘‘If it wasn’t for the fact that Bruno was nowhere as skinny as the boys on his side of the fence, and not quite so pale either, it would have been difficult to tell them apart. It was almost (Shmuel thought) as if they were all exactly the same really.’’

Anne Frank from the other side? Not quite. But almost there.