After years of ups and downs, John Boyne struck gold with his fifth novel, about two boys on different sides of a concentration camp fence. But he's still not taking anything for granted, he says.
JOHN BOYNE USED to sell other people's books at a Waterstone's outlet in his native Dublin. Now his own books are selling, and in vast quantities in the case of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. When we meet over lunch at a Dublin hotel, Boyne says he knew from when he was around 14 years old that he wanted to be a writer, but he frankly admits that it hasn't been easy.
"There have been a lot of ups and downs in my writing career, and there were times when it was very hard," he says. "I was dropped by my publisher after my first two books. But I always believed in myself. The night we launched Striped Pyjamasin the Irish Writers' Centre was an important night for me. In this country, people have embraced the book so much and so many people have supported it."
Boyne's fifth novel, it has been translated into 35 languages and sold over three million copies, including, remarkably, over half a million in Ireland. Boyne appears to be entirely unaffected by this.
"My previous books hadn't done a huge amount, you know, but I thought it was going to be successful. There was a lot of buzz in the book trade about it, which there hadn't been with my other books. I didn't think it was a million times better than anything I had done before, and I certainly didn't think it would do as well as it did, or that a movie would be made from it. I think the whole idea of approaching it from a fresh perspective, of the two boys, was what made it work. It tells the story in a way people haven't heard before."
Set during the second World War, the novel charts the friendship formed between Bruno and Shmuel, two young boys on opposite sides of a Nazi concentration camp fence. Bruno is the son of the camp's new commandant; Shmuel is among the Jews imprisoned there.
The first draft came together within a few days in 2004, Boyne says. "I had the idea of the two boys at the fence. I hadn't been to any of the concentration camps, although I have since, but I had been a serious reader of non-fiction books about the Holocaust. I think I was reasonably well-informed about it, although I never thought I would write about it. The idea came to me on a Tuesday night. I started writing it the next morning and finished it by Friday lunchtime. I didn't sleep for two nights and just kept writing. Then I spent six months editing it."
WRITTEN IN SOLITUDE, the book was optioned for a film treatment that has been realised with a cast and crew of over 100 people. Mark Herman, who directed the film, set himself the task of adapting the novel, and it was produced by David Heyman, who has enjoyed phenomenal success with the movies of the Harry Potter books.
"I wouldn't have signed it over to just anybody, but I knew it was in good hands with David and Mark," Boyne says. "I felt that, regardless of what happened, it doesn't change the book. In a way, it was a win-win situation. If the film turned out to be terrible, people would say it wasn't as good as the book. If the movie turned out to be good, then it would get into other people's hands. I never really felt too worried, although the afternoon I saw the film for the first time, I was nervous. I wanted to be able to love it, and I did. It's a very faithful adaptation."
As an avid film-goer, Boyne was keenly aware of how well - and how badly - some novels had been adapted as movies. He cites Howard's End, The Talented Mr Ripleyand To Kill a Mockingbirdamong the finest screen adaptations, and Memoirs of a Geisha, The Human Stainand Possessionamong the worst.
Heyman, the producer, read a proof of Boyne's book, as did Herman the director. "It seemed to capture Mark's imagination," Boyne says. "He got in contact and I met with him. I also met with David. Mark optioned the book with his own money because he really wanted to do it. Then he and David joined forces on it. That was in 2006 and it started filming in April 2007.
"I got e-mails from David and Mark all the time, and I was waiting for the e-mail that said we're going to hold off for a year or two. I still didn't believe it would happen until I was in a cinema and the curtains opened and it was on the screen.
"I felt Mark and David knew what they were doing, and that they were very honest about it. When Mark and I talked about how he was going to adapt it, I wanted to be sure he would respect the story which, obviously, was very important to me. Right from the first meeting, he impressed me with his absolute determination to make the movie that's in those pages. I had seen his films Brassed Offand Little Voiceand I liked them both. Of course, I was aware of David from the Harry Potter films, and I felt if JK Rowling trusted him, that was good enough for me."
Herman's earlier films had been emotional without tipping into sentimentality, a delicate balance that was appropriate for Boyne's book. "I was conscious of keeping sentimentality out of the story when I was writing it," Boyne says.
"I remember my editor telling me that I had that tendency at times and that in the rewrites I should watch out for not trusting the story enough."
HE WAS ON a night out in Dublin when he got a text message that American actress Vera Farmiga (from The Departed) had been cast as the mother of the Bruno character. "That was when I felt the film was actually going to happen," Boyne says. It was soon followed by the news that David Thewlis, who won the best actor award at Cannes for Naked, had been cast as Bruno's father.
Whereas many directors insist that screenwriters are never allowed near the film set, Boyne enjoyed unusually open access to the production. As he recalls his first day on the set in Budapest 16 months ago, the excitement he felt is still palpable.
"I didn't know what either of the boys looked like until I went on the set. They were shooting the opening scene and I saw Asa Butterfield, who plays Bruno, running towards me. It was the first time I laid eyes on him. I always saw Bruno as small, slight and rather angelic, and Asa was perfect. I was overwhelmed by the whole thing.
"I've read a lot about movies and I'm aware that the author does not get that much input. I made the decision at the start that I wasn't going to be annoying, that I'd let them get on with it and be helpful in any way I could. Just as I had to trust them, they had to trust me, and we just built up that trust."
As happens in screen adaptations, some scenes were cut and new scenes added. "At the start, Mark asked me to list scenes that were so important to me that I would be devastated if they weren't there," Boyne says.
"It was a given that the ending could not be changed, and there's a moment towards the end of the book where the two boys hold hands, and I really wanted that to be there. I was very pleased he wanted to keep that in."
It's not at all unusual for upbeat endings to be tacked on to screen adaptations, but Herman's moving, deeply involving film remains admirably true to the numbing conclusion of Boyne's book.
One significant change Herman made was to introduce a scene where Bruno sees a Nazi propaganda film that presents an entirely misleading picture of the concentration camps. "I thought that works very well," Boyne says.
"The book hasn't gone without criticism, that's for sure. There are some people who can't bear the book and who think it's terrible. It's a book that people tend to either really love or really hate.
"I think the propaganda film scene works very well because it picks up on some of those criticisms, that Bruno might be too naive. He needed a moment where he would question what his father was doing, even though he's still so naive that he doesn't realise that he's being conned, as anyone watching that propaganda film would be."
TAKING ON THE HOLOCAUST as a theme is a high-risk venture that inevitably prompts debate and detailed analysis.
Roberto Benigni received three Oscar nominations and won one for Life is Beautiful, a comedy which also placed a child in a Nazi concentration camp, but the film drew at least as much outrage as kudos.
"I think a comedy is difficult," Boyne believes. "I'm not sure what the motivation is to make a comedy out of that subject. There are moments of humour in my book, but it's not a comedy. I liked the Benigni film when I saw it, but it's not one of those films that stayed with me.
"With my book, I was most concerned about the Jewish audience, firstly, and the German audience. I went on a tour of the US in 2006 and in every city I was going to Jewish community centres or synagogues or Holocaust museums. Some people would be really in favour of the book, and some would be unsure about my motivation and wanted to ask questions, but not in any aggressive way. I found a lot of the time that these meetings were not so much about winning a group over, but explaining what my intentions were, and I found that most people accepted them."
Next month Boyne embarks on an eight-city US tour with the film of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which opens there on November 7th, its release timed for the awards season that builds towards the Oscar nominations in January. Then he will concentrate on finishing the editing of his seventh novel, The House of Special Purpose, to be published in May 2009.
He describes it as an epic love story. "An 80-year-old man, whose wife is dying, is recalling their lives together. It starts in the Russian Revolution, when they first met and works its way right through to the 1980s in London. One part of the story is working forwards through the revolution and the other part is working backwards through their lives together as husband and wife."
Now that one of his novels has been turned into a movie, has John Boyne any plans to write a story specifically as a screenplay? "It's made me think about it, and it's made me think that I probably shouldn't," he laughs.
"When I look over the past eight years since I've been publishing novels, it's taken me a long time to get established as a novelist. That's my first love and I think I just want to keep writing novels. Even though this film has been a very positive experience, I feel that if I assume that's going to happen every time, it's only going to lead to disappointment.
"So, at the moment, I don't have any ambitions in that line. If anyone wants to make a movie of my other books, fine."
• The Boy in the Striped Pyjamasgoes on general release on Friday