Through the innocent eyes of Bruno, the eight-year-old son of the commandant at a German concentration camp, a forbidden friendship with a Jewish boy on the other side of the camp fence has startling and unexpected consequences.
It shows three guards entering a small cell in Alice Springs, taking the child by the neck and turning his head away before dropping him facedown onto a mattress.
When my son nearly 12 years old read the book he was awake until 5am that night thinking about the story and what it all meant; he had some penetrating questions too.