From the author of the globally bestselling, multi-million-copy classic, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, and The Heart's Invisible Furies.
Ninety-one-year-old Gretel Fernsby has lived in the same mansion block in London for decades. She leads a comfortable, quiet life, despite her dark and disturbing past. She doesn't talk about her escape from Germany over seventy years before. She doesn't talk about the post-war years in France with her mother. Most of all, she doesn't talk about her father, the commandant of one of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps.
Then, a young family moves into the apartment below her. In spite of herself, Gretel can't help but begin a friendship with the little boy, Henry, though his presence brings back memories she would rather forget. One night, she witnesses a violent argument between Henry's mother and his domineering father, one that threatens Gretel's hard-won, self-contained existence.
Gretel is faced with a chance to expiate her guilt, grief and remorse and act to save a young boy - for the second time in her life. But to do so, she will be forced to reveal her true identity to the world. Will she make a different choice this time, whatever the cost to herself?
|
John Boyne was born in Ireland in 1971. He is the author of 5 previous novels, including the international bestseller The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, which won two Irish Book Awards, was shortlisted for the British Book Award and has recently been made into a Miramax feature film. His novels are published in over 30 languages. He lives in Dublin