The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a fictional tale of the unlikeliest of friends: the son of a Nazi commandant and a Jewish concentration camp inmate. Written by John Boyne and published in 2006, the book is about life, a world at War and what happens when two little, alike but so very different, meet and try to form a friendship.
It is about what happens when trust to a friend is put up against your family's wishes.
What happens when it's either you or your friend who will get beaten for saying the wrong thing, except the friend isn't thought of as human, he's not even thought of as a child.
And it's about a world, where people are rash and don't do things at all right, not older people anyway, the children are the only ones who seem to have any sense left.
It's about our world.
In a War.
A boy's family moves, near a concentration camp.
He and his family are safe though...
The boy sees another little boy, on the other side of the fence and they talk, they play as well as they can, from either side of a wire fence.
And neither know just what's going on.
It's about something that should never have happened.The story ends with Bruno about to return to the family's old home in Berlin. As a final adventure, he agrees to dress in a set of striped pyjamas and climb under a loose wire in the fence to help Shmuel find his father, who went missing in the camp. The boys are unable to find him, and just as it starts to rain and get dark, Bruno decides he would like to go home, yet the Nazis in the area of the camp force the boys to go on a march. Neither boy knows where this march will lead. However, they are soon crowded into a gas chamber, and the author leaves the story with Bruno pondering, yet unafraid, in the dark holding hands with Shmuel. "...Despite the chaos that followed, Bruno found that he was still holding Shmuel's hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let go".

In an epilogue, Bruno's family spend several months at their home trying to find Bruno, before his mother and Gretel return to Berlin, only to discover he is not there as they had expected. A year afterwards, his father returns to the spot that the soldiers found Bruno's clothes (the same spot Bruno spent the last year of his life) and, after a brief inspection, discovers that the fence is not properly attached at the base and can form a gap big enough for a boy of Bruno's size to fit through. Using this information, his father eventually pieces together what happened to Bruno. Several months later, the Red Army arrives to liberate the camp and order Bruno's father to come with them. He goes without complaint, because "he didn't really mind what they did to him anymore".