John Boyne

For the painter from County Down, see John Boyne (artist).

John Boyne
Boyne in 2010
Boyne in 2010
Born (1971-04-30) 30 April 1971
Dublin, Ireland
OccupationAuthor, novelist, writer
LanguageEnglish
NationalityIrish
Alma mater
Period2000–present
GenreHistorical fiction, literary fiction
Notable works
Website
johnboyne.com

John Boyne (born 30 April 1971) is an Irish author, novelist, and writer.[1] He is the author of sixteen novels for adults, six novels for younger readers, two novellas, and one collection of short stories. Boyne's historical novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, first published in 2006, was adapted into a 2008 film of the same name. As of 2022, the book has sold more than 11 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling books of all time.[2][3] It has also been translated into 58 languages,[4] and a sequel, All the Broken Places, was published in 2022.

Biography

Boyne was born in Dublin, Ireland, where he still lives. His first short story was published by the Sunday Tribune and in 1993 was shortlisted for a Hennessy Literary Award.

Boyne was educated at Terenure College, a Carmelite-run secondary school in Dublin. He read English at Trinity College Dublin, graduating BA in 1993.[5][6] He subsequently obtained an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia (UEA) in 1995 where he studied under Malcolm Bradbury.[7] In 2015 he was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by UEA.[8]

He chaired the jury for the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize.[9]

Boyne is gay, and has spoken about the difficulties he encountered growing up gay in Catholic Ireland.[10][11][12] He has spoken of suffering physical and sexual abuse at Terenure College as a student.[13]

He regards John Banville as "the world's greatest living writer".[14]

In May 2024, Boyne was the castaway on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.[15]

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

Main article: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas was published in 2006. The book has sold over seven million copies worldwide.[16] A Heyday/Miramax film adaptation, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, was shot in Budapest in mid-2007 and released in late 2008. Directed by Mark Herman, the film stars Asa Butterfield, David Thewlis, Vera Farmiga, Rupert Friend and Sheila Hancock. In January 2020, the book was cited by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, in a set of back and forth tweets between the museum and the author, as a book that should be avoided by those promoting accurate understanding of the Holocaust.[17] In response, Boyne suggested that the museum's criticism contained inaccurate information.[18]

My Brother's Name Is Jessica

Boyne's 2019 book My Brother's Name Is Jessica, about a young boy coming to terms with his older sibling coming out as a trans girl, was criticised over its portrayal of transgender topics and for misgendering people. In an article in The Irish Times promoting the book, Boyne explained that he was inspired to write it by a transgender friend of his, and had spoken to gender-identity professionals and "several trans people" to ensure he portrayed the book's subject matter authentically. However, he received further criticism for stating in the article that "I reject the word 'cis' ... I don't consider myself a cis man; I consider myself a man." He added that "while I will happily employ any term that a person feels best defines them ... I reject the notion that someone can force an unwanted term on to another".[19][20]

Boyne deleted his Twitter account, citing social media harassment, though he would later rejoin the site.[21][22][18] Some writers have supported him.[23][24] In 2020, comedian and writer Aidan Comerford, who had repeatedly accused Boyne of transphobia, issued an apology via Twitter. Comerford admitted that his tweets about Boyne "were relentless harassment" that had caused Boyne "great distress". Boyne responded by saying: "I am grateful for Aidan Comerford's apologies and retractions and, outside of that, I have no further comment."[25]

He alluded to the backlash he received over the book again in a newspaper column in 2021. Although Boyne did not mention Comerford by name, he referenced someone who "admitted that he'd been engaged in a determined campaign of 'relentless harassment'", and then "slithered back to his subterranean cavern to lick his wounds".[26]

A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom

In August 2020, it was noticed that A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom, which takes place in the real world in the year 1 AD, contained a section in which a seamstress refers to the ingredients used to create dyes. However, the listed ingredients were entirely fictional, being taken from the 2017 videogame The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and included items such as the "silent princess" flower, "octorok eyeballs", and "the tail of the red lizalfos".[27]

Political views

Boyne identifies as a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist)[28] and described women who support trans inclusion in gendered spaces and the rights of children to access gender-affirming healthcare as "astonishingly complicit in their own erasure", and likened them to Serena Joy, a character from The Handmaid's Tale, who is "ready to pin a handmaiden down as her husband rapes her".[28][29] In the wake of the Polari Prize controversy, he quote-replied to a user criticising the prize on Twitter (formally "X") by saying that "there is no such thing as LGBTQ+. There are just individual men & women, each one knowing who they're attracted to & living their lives".[30]

Boyne's nomination in the long list for the 2025 Polari Prize caused two thirds of the other nominees and 2 judges to withdraw and the award to be cancelled for the year.[31][32][33][29] An open letter and petition by authors Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin and Emma van Straaten called on the prize to withdraw Boyne from the longlist was signed by over 800 writers and people in the publishing industry.[29] Other authors speaking out against Boyne's longlisting included Patrick Ness.[34] Boyne was interpreted as having contemplated suicide as a result of having received "endless harassment at the hands of both strangers and fellow writers",[35] but clarified subsequently that his feeling that he "didn't want to go on" was intended to mean he had thought about abandoning writing.[36] The 2025 prize was "paused" on 18 August as a result of the controversy[29][36] and Boyne expressed disappointment that nobody from the Polari Prize had contacted him throughout what he described as a "literary scandal".[36]

Selected works

Novels

Novels for younger readers

  • 2006: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (David Fickling Books)
  • 2010: Noah Barleywater Runs Away (David Fickling Books)
  • 2012: The Terrible Thing That Happened To Barnaby Brocket (Doubleday Children's)
  • 2013: Stay Where You Are And Then Leave (Doubleday Children's)
  • 2015: The Boy at the Top of the Mountain (Doubleday Children's)
  • 2019: My Brother's Name Is Jessica (Puffin)
  • 2024: The Dog Who Danced on the Moon (Penguin)

Novellas

  • 2008: The Second Child (New Island Books)
  • 2009: The Dare (Black Swan Books)

Short story collections

  • 2015: Beneath The Earth (Doubleday)

Awards

  • The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas: winner: Irish Book Awards Children's Book of the Year; Irish Book Awards Radio 1 Book of the Year; Qué Leer Award Best International Novel of the Year (Spain); Orange Prize Readers Group: Book of the Year; Children's Books Ireland Book of the Year. Shortlist: Irish Book Award Novel of the Year; British Book Award; the Border's New Voices Award; the Ottar's Children's Book Prize; the Paolo Ungari Literary Award (Italy); Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis (Germany). Longlist: The Carnegie Medal; the International IMPAC Literary Award
  • Noah Barleywater Runs Away: shortlisted for Irish Book Awards Children's Book of the Year; Sheffield Children's Book Award, Hull Children's Book Award; Longlist: The Carnegie Medal
  • The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket: shortlisted for Irish Book Awards: Children's Book of the Year; Longlist: The Carnegie Medal
  • The Absolutist: Longlist: International Dublin Literary Award
  • Stay Where You Are And Then Leave: shortlisted for Irish Book Awards Children's Book of the Year; Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis (Germany)
  • A History of Loneliness: shortlisted for Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year
  • The Boy At The Top Of The Mountain: shortlisted for Irish Book Awards Children's Book of the Year; Children's Books Ireland Book of the Year
  • The Heart's Invisible Furies: shortlisted for Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year
  • The "Invisible Furies": 2017 Book of the Year for Book of the Month
  • A Ladder to the Sky: shortlisted for Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year; Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award

Other Awards:

  • 2012: Hennessy Literary Award Hall of Fame
  • 2014: Winner: Irish Book Awards: Short Story of the Year ("Rest Day")
  • 2015: Shortlist: Irish Book Awards: Short Story of the Year ("Boy, 19")
  • 2015: Gustav Heinemann Peace Prize (Germany)

References

  1. ^ O Conghaile, Pól (23 October 2010). "Wild Child of a Different Stripe". Irish Examiner. Retrieved 27 October 2010.
  2. ^ Lapin, Andrew (December 2022). "The sequel to the Holocaust novel Boy in the Striped Pajamas is here. Its author has no regrets". The Jerusalem Post.
  3. ^ Grisham, Leah (January 2023). "We Need to Talk About Bruno from The Boy in the Striped Pajamas". Lilith. New York, USA.
  4. ^ Doyle, Martin (March 2022). "Sequel announced for The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas". The Irish Times. Dublin.
  5. ^ Sherlock, D. J. M. (2006). Trinity College Record Volume 2006. Dublin: Trinity College Dublin Press. ISBN 1-871408-07-5.
  6. ^ "Telling tales about Trinity College in the 90s". The Irish Times. 19 December 2016. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
  7. ^ Boyne, John (November 2014). "Interview with John Boyne". New Writing (Interview). Interviewed by Emma Miller. University of East Anglia. Retrieved 17 August 2025.
  8. ^ "Honorary Graduates". University of East Anglia. Retrieved 17 August 2025.
  9. ^ Medley, Mark (14 January 2015). "The Giller Prize expands its jury to five people". The Globe and Mail.
  10. ^ Boyne, John (19 July 2017). "At Swim, Two Boys Is a Great Irish Novel, a Gay Love Story but So Much More". The Irish Times. Retrieved 1 February 2019. As a young gay man behind a bookshop counter, I watched the people who bought At Swim, Two Boys—and there were a lot of them—and used it as a tool for flirtation. A reprint of John Boyne's introduction to At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill.
  11. ^ Boyne, John (22 February 2018). "John Boyne on Homosexuality and Changing Attitudes". WHSmith. Retrieved 1 February 2019. [...] not because I had any issue with being gay [...]
  12. ^ Boyne, John (7 November 2014). "John Boyne: 'The Catholic priesthood blighted my youth and the youth of people like me'". The Irish Times. Retrieved 1 February 2019. It's not easy to be a young, gay teenager [...]
  13. ^ Boyne, John (20 February 2021). "John Boyne: I was abused at Terenure College, but not by John McClean". The Irish Times. Retrieved 20 February 2021.
  14. ^ Boyne, John [@john_boyne] (11 October 2019). "... John Banville, who, for me, is the world's greatest living writer, is someone who has a legitimate chance of winning the Nobel Prize" (Tweet). Archived from the original on 11 October 2019. Retrieved 11 October 2019 – via Twitter.
  15. ^ "John Boyne, writer". Desert Island Discs. BBC Radio 4. Retrieved 6 June 2024 – via BBC Sounds.
  16. ^ McClements, Freya (5 December 2016). "Is making a living just from writing books a literary fiction?". The Irish Times. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  17. ^ McGreevy, Ronan (5 January 2020). "Avoid John Boyne's Holocaust novel, Auschwitz Museum advises". The Irish Times. Retrieved 6 January 2020.
  18. ^ a b Flood, Alison (7 January 2020). "The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas author defends work from criticism by Auschwitz memorial". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 27 February 2020.
  19. ^ Boyne, John (13 April 2019). "John Boyne: Why I support trans rights but reject the word 'cis'". The Irish Times. I reject the word 'cis' ... I don't consider myself a cis man; I consider myself a man.
  20. ^ Gaden Gilmartin, Cassia (16 April 2019). "Irish Author John Boyne Faces Backlash From Trans Activists Over New Novel". Gay Community News.
  21. ^ Lynch, Donal (24 April 2018). "'I was warned not to go out alone' – author John Boyne in gender-label row". Irish Independent.
  22. ^ O'Connor, Amy (16 April 2019). "John Boyne deletes Twitter account after trans article backlash". The Irish Times.
  23. ^ Rickets, Chris (20 April 2019). "John Boyne flying flag for trans people even if he is holding it upside down". The Irish Times.
  24. ^ Whelan, Ella (25 April 2019). "John Boyne is a man, not a 'cis' man". Spiked.
  25. ^ Barter, Pavel (19 July 2020). "Battle of the Boyne ends with novelist thankful for Aidan Comerford apology". The Sunday Times. Archived from the original on 19 July 2020. Retrieved 26 May 2023.
  26. ^ Boyne, John (13 August 2021). "John Boyne: 'Only a fool or an incurable optimist would think you can solve the world's problems in 280 characters'". Irish Independent. Archived from the original on 28 May 2023. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  27. ^ Flood, Alison (3 August 2020). "John Boyne accidentally includes Zelda video game monsters in novel". The Guardian.
  28. ^ a b Boyne, John (27 July 2025). "John Boyne on JK Rowling: 'As a writer, I'm in awe of her achievements. As a reader, I love her work. And as a fellow Terf, I stand four-square behind her'". Irish Independent. Retrieved 8 August 2025.
  29. ^ a b c d Boulter, Hosanna (18 August 2025). "Polari literary prize cancels award following backlash over Irish author John Boyne". The Irish Times. Retrieved 19 August 2025.
  30. ^ Boyne, John [@JohnBoyneBooks] (19 August 2025). "Perhaps, @aidanctweets, you total fruitcake, there IS no such thing as LGBTQ+. There are just individual men & women, each one knowing who they're attracted to & living their lives. No wait, sorry, obviously a supposedly straight man understands the gay world better than me.🤦‍♂️" (Tweet). Archived from the original on 19 August 2025. Retrieved 19 August 2025 – via Twitter.
  31. ^ Creamer, Ella (19 August 2025). "Polari book prize cancelled after row over gender-critical novelist". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 20 August 2025.
  32. ^ Robson, Graham (7 August 2025). "Polari Prize faces backlash for including 'TERF' author John Boyne on 2025 longlist". Scene Magazine. Retrieved 8 August 2025.
  33. ^ "Polari Prize longlist announced but authors launch protest action over inclusion of John Boyne". OutInPerth. 9 August 2025. Retrieved 9 August 2025. Author Sacha Coward has asked for his book Queer as Folklore to be removed, as has Mae Diansangu who was included for her debut novel Bloodsongs. Jason Okundaye has withdrawn his work Revolutionary Acts: Love & Brotherhood in Black Gay Britain, and Amy Twigg author of Spoilt Creatures pulled her book from contention too.
  34. ^ Ness, Patrick [@patricknessbooks]; (18 August 2025). "Turns out most people aren't transphobes and don't like being associated with it". Retrieved 19 August 2025 – via Instagram.
  35. ^ Weaver, Matthew (14 August 2025). "John Boyne says LGBTQ+ fiction prize backlash brought him 'close to the edge'". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 August 2025.
  36. ^ a b c Boyne, John (19 August 2025). "Here's what happened when they tried to cancel me". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 19 August 2025. Retrieved 19 August 2025.
  37. ^ Hamilton, Sheila. "A Ladder to the Sky Reviewed". New York Journal of Books.
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