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The boy in the stripped pajamas Full TEXT

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'A tale of the innocence of youth and the disastrous consequences of a friendship across a divide '
Waterstone 's Books Quarterly

'An extraordinary book that made me feel increasingly chilled ' TES

'The new The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night­
Time? ' Heat

'Successful fiction captures the imagination, it allows us to live lives that are extraordinary to us. The story of Bruno and Shmuel within The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas does exactly that, through it we gain a fresh and new perspec­ tive on the Holocaust ... it is a novel whose ending remains with readers long after the pages are finished, it is a novel that inspires thought and difference of opinion, it is a book that deserves to be read, to be …show more content…

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For Jamie Lynch

Acknowledgements

For all their advice and insightful comments and for never allowing me to lose my focus on the story, many thanks to David Fickling, Bella Pearson and Linda Sargent. And for getting behind this from the start ' thanks, as ever, to my agent Simon Trewin.
Thanks also to my old friend Janette Jenkins for her great encouragement after reading an early draft.

Chapter One

Bruno Makes a Discovery

One afternoon, when Bruno came home from school, he was surprised to find Maria, the family 's maid - who always kept her head bowed and never looked up from the carpet -standing in his bedroom, pulling all his belongings out of the wardrobe and packing them in four large wooden crates, even the things he 'd hidden at the back that belonged to him and were nobody else 's business. 'What are you doing? ' he asked in as polite a tone as he could muster, for although he wasn 't happy to come home and find someone going through his possessions, his mother had always told him that he was to treat Maria respectfully and not just imitate the 'Way Father

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