John Boyne, Ryan Tubridy tells us, is never boring. The prolific, bestselling, award-winning novelist spoke to Ryan about his forthcoming sequel to 2006's The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. And Reader, he was not boring. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas has sold a staggering 11 million copies (and counting), as well as being translated into 57 languages – more than any other Irish novel.

"In all the novels I’ve written in my career, I’ve never written a sequel. Well, we’re just announcing today that I have, in fact, written a sequel and it’s to be published in September and it’s a sequel to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and it’s called All the Broken Places."

The title, John says, is – unfortunately – especially appropriate to the times we’re living through. But for those of us who’ve read The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas – and there are a lot of us – the obvious question is, how on earth could there be a sequel? It’s a question John has been working through for 16 years:

"It takes the story of Gretel, Bruno’s older sister, who, if she was alive today, would be 91 years old. So, she, at 91, is looking back on her life, a life that’s been scarred by grief and guilt and thinking about her family and haunted by the events of the war. So, like many of my books, it’s a novel about, I guess, guilt and complicity, but it features quite a few characters from The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and I’m hoping that the people who – you know, so many people enjoyed that book and were moved by it, I hope I’ve done it justice."

Ryan wondered whether the decision to write a sequel to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas was a brave or a mad one. But John’s been planning it since he finished the original. He told Ryan that he’s kept a file on his computer since 2006 called Gretel’s Story and he’s been making notes in it and writing bits of it all this time. He wasn’t sure, though, when the right time to publish it might be:

"I often thought, actually, that it would be the book I would write at the end of my life. You know, if I knew that I was, like – if I was probably about 90 and knew that I was coming to an end, I would write it then and publish it."

But then lockdown came and it felt for John like the right time to finish the book and set it on its way into the world. Come September, he says, we’ll be able to judge whether the decision to write Gretel’s story was brave or mad.

You can hear Ryan’s full conversation with John Boyne – including some clarifying details about his alleged spat with the Auschwitz Memorial – by going here.

All the Broken Places by John Boyne will be published in September by Doubleday.