
When I came across the novel at Kinokuniya, I wasn't entirely sure that I wanted it, especially since there were a bunch of other books sitting neatly in my bookshelf untouched, waiting to be read. And yet, as indifferent as I was, I felt the title was curiously familiar, like I'd seen it from time to time. It was strange considering that the novel was quite new and probably had just arrived a couple of days ago. The cover was also oddly familiar; the big stripes, faded baby blue and slightly greyish white. Looking at the cover, I instantly pictured this gaunt, baldheaded boy wearing faded blue-white pajamas sitting across an enormous, wire gate.

Then, I realized that I
had seen the title, no, maybe the more correct word is
looked at the title. Yes, I hadn't just caught a glimpse of the title, I'd looked at it. But it hadn't been a book's title. It had been more of a movie's title, or so I used to think. I'd never been aware that this was in fact a movie based on the novel of the same title.
The novel basically tells us about an odd friendship between two 9 year-olds trapped in horrendous circumstances. It starts with a boy named Bruno who finds his maid packing up his stuff into wooden crates. He later finds out that he's moving out of town along with his family to a new home at a strangely secluded place called Out-With. Of course, Bruno is very upset regarding the fact that he has to leave his lavish 5-storey mansion, the cheerful busy street nearby, and his 3 best friends. And much to his dismay, Bruno finds himself calling the depressing little house his new home.
Bruno's new home isn't the only thing that upsets him though, him having no friends and being prohibited to go out and explore also add to his misery. On a lighter note, Bruno discovers something interesting at Out-With, an encounter that he never thought of before. It turns out that Bruno's new home is not very far from a camp in which he sees a town of people dressed in striped pajamas separated from him by a wire fence. Seeing this makes him feel a tingle of curiosity. Then one day, feeling completely bored and lonely, Bruno decided to try for a walk but end up following the direction of the wire fence. Along the walk, Bruno spots a dot on the other side of the fence and as he gets closer, the dot turns out to be a thin fragile-looking 9 year-old boy sitting on dusty ground.
Later we, readers, will follow Bruno as he walks along the fence everyday, talking to Shmuel, the thin boy, who's in fact a Jew and has been separated from his mother to be brought with his father and brother to the camp.
I believe that from this point, we have understood what this novel is really about, no? Yes, it's about Holocaust; the term for the notorious massacre of the Jewish population during World War II. Shmuel, is in fact a Jewish boy who's trapped in a concentration camp while Bruno is, ironically, a son of a respected SS officer's. However, despite their differences, both of them quickly become inseparable.
The story is overall an elegant effortless read filled with a plethora of puns which adult readers should have no trouble deciphering, Out-With as an example. It is not so disturbingly long that makes you want to throw it away nor written in difficult fancy words yet the words used really do their job to capture the emotion and events that occur throughout the story. This book, in my opinion, is going to be those children's books which adults will read. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is not only remarkably heart-breaking and will provoke questions regarding Holocaust but its ending is also an unusual one for it is grotesquely clever.