The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

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For all their advice and insightful comments and for never allowing me to lose my focus on the story, many thanks to David Fickling, Bella Pearson and Linda Sargent. And for getting behind this from the start – thanks, as ever, to my agent Simon Trewin.

Thanks also to my old friend Janette Jenkins for her great encouragement after reading an early draft.

One afternoon, when Bruno came home from school, he was surprised to find Maria, the family’s maid-who always kept her head bowed and never looked up from the carpet-standing in his bedroom, pulling all his belongings out of the wardrobe and packing them in four large wooden crates, even the things he’d hidden at the back that belonged to him and were nobody else’s business.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked in as polite a tone as he could muster, for although he wasn’t happy to come home and find someone going through his possessions, his mother had always told him that he was to treat Maria respectfully and not just imitate the Way Father spoke to her. ‘You take your hands off my things.’

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