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All the Broken Places by John Boyne

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All the Broken Places by John Boyne

"You can't prepare yourself for the magnitude and emotional impact of this powerful novel." --John Irving

From the New York Times bestselling author John Boyne, a stunning tour de force about a woman who must confront the sins of her own terrible past, and a present in which it is never too late for bravery


Ninety-one-year-old Gretel Fernsby has lived in the same well-to-do mansion block in London for decades. She lives a quiet, comfortable life, despite her deeply disturbing, dark past. She doesn't talk about her escape from Nazi Germany at age twelve. She doesn't talk about the grim postwar years in France with her mother. Most of all, she doesn't talk about her father, who was the commandant of one of the Reich's most notorious extermination camps.

Then, a new 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 disturbing, violent argument between Henry's beautiful mother and his arrogant father, one that threatens Gretel's hard-won, self-contained existence.

Immersive, chilling, unputdownable, All the Broken Places moves back and forth in time between Gretel's girlhood in Germany and present-day London. Here, Gretel is at a similar crossroads to the one she encountered long ago. Then, she denied her own complicity, but now, faced with a chance to interrogate her guilt, grief, and remorse, she can choose to save a young boy. If she does, she will be forced to reveal the secrets she has spent a lifetime protecting. This time, she can make a different choice than before--whatever the cost to herself.
John Boyne was born in Dublin, Ireland. He studied English literature at Trinity College, Dublin, and was a student in creative writing at the University of East Anglia, where he was awarded the Curtis Brown Prize. He began publishing short stories in his early twenties and was shortlisted for a Hennessy Literary Award. He is also the author of the children's novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which has been shortlisted for the Ottakar's Children's Book Prize. He has taught creative writing at the Irish Writer's Centre and at the University of East Anglia, where he was awarded the Writing Fellowship for 2005; in the same year, Ireland's Sunday Business Post named him one of the forty people under forty in Ireland likely to be the movers and shakers who will define the country's culture, politics, style and economics in 2005 and beyond. Crippen was nominated for the Sunday Independent Hughes & Hughes Irish Novel of the Year Award. Boyne's work has been translated into fourteen languages. He lives with his partner in Dublin.


SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9780593653449
ISBN 10 0593653440
Title All the Broken Places
Author John Boyne
Condition Unavailable
Binding Type Paperback
Publisher Penguin Putnam Inc
Year published 2023-11-28
Number of pages 400
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.