Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Author of the international bestseller The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and the most translated Irish author in history.
On the island
Eight records
This was the first single that I bought. I think I was about seven when I bought it.
I would sit down in his armchair and I would put the sound of music on and put the headphones on and I would not be moved until I'd finished the whole album.
It's called Elton's Song and it's slightly unusual because the lyrics were not by Bernie Taupin. They were by a guy called Tom Robinson. But the song is about a boy in school who's realising he's gay and has a crush on another boy.
I can trace the moment of my sexual awakening in life to a very small period of time... between 7.02 and 7.06pm on Thursday, the 7th of November, 1985.
A Lullaby for Kane by Sinéad O'Connor... a beautiful song written by Gabriel Yared. I was lucky enough to meet her a few times.
A young Jewish composer called Noah Max contacted me and wanted to turn the book into an opera... he wrote this beautiful opera.
The first song that we had was Make Your Own Kind of Music by Mama Cass... it seemed like appropriate.
Night of the SwallowFavourite
I fell in love with Kate Bush when I was a child... Night of the Swallow is on The Dreaming.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:50Does it always feel like there's more creativity to come?
Oh, it always feels like a lifetime still to come. I've never been one of those writers who says that I don't like writing, I wish I didn't have to. It still excites me as much as it did at the very start. Every time I'm finishing a book I get excited about what the next one might be.
Presenter asks
7:46Who nurtured your love of reading when you were little?
Uh my mum, really. We got a half day from school every Wednesday and there's this beautiful library in Dundrum in Dublin which is very close to my house and my mum would bring us all to the library every Wednesday afternoon and I remember we could take out three books. The only times we really bought books was when we were going to go on holidays and then we would go to the bookshop and we could buy books to bring with us.
Presenter asks
13:32What were you and your fellow pupils dealing with, and how routine was the abuse that was happening?
It was very routine and it seemed like this is just what happens. And you know, you're a kid, you trust adults, you think this is just what happens, you know, and you don't really know how to question it. There was definitely a culture of violence in the school and there was definitely a cohort of teachers, both lay teachers and priests, who were sexually abusing boys. We knew it was going on. As weird as this sounds, we would joke about it at thirteen.
The keepsakes
The book
T.S. Eliot
The reason I've chosen it is it's a book I go back to time and again. I've read it many times. There's such storytelling in it.
The luxury
A DVD player that plays the film The Devil Wears Prada
I just want to sit and watch The Devil Wears Prada over and over and over. I think that would get me through.
Presenter asks
19:42What does it give you to get inside the head of a character [who is guilty or complicit]?
I think if there's a running theme through my books, or at least through the books of the last 15 years, it's complicity. You know, it's people who haven't committed the crime, but have known the crime is going on. And I want to understand that. It's more interesting to me to say, but why would somebody know that's happening and do nothing about it?
Presenter asks
25:41What do you remember about the moment you found out your first novel was going to be published?
Oh, well, I was watching East Enders. I remember that. I was living in London. I was 28 and I was working in the head office... I'd got an agent a year before, and he had sent the book out in, I think, June of that year to about 20 publishers... And that day came and no offers. And I was absolutely devastated... Unbeknownst to me, he continued sending the book out and the Frankfurt Book Fair came around in October and I was at home watching East Enders and the phone rang and it was my agent Simon Truan and he said I have some news for you. I wasn't expecting it. I wasn't waiting for the call. And my life changed in that moment.
Presenter asks
35:28Why do you think The Boy in the Striped Pajamas might not be published if submitted today?
I think that the current climate that we're living in in publishing is very nervous of anything that could potentially be controversial. My view on that book, and I have listened to a lot of the criticism, I've taken it in. Some of it I understand, some of it I don't understand. But what I feel about it is that it is a novel. It's subtitled A Fable, a work of fiction with a moral at the centre. It was never pretending to be anything more than that. If you want the facts of the Holocaust, don't read a novel, read a non-fiction work. A whole generation of children has grown up and read that book and has got some insight into the Holocaust. And that itself, I think, is something to be proud of.
“I was writing stories from that very young age... and when adults would say to me, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up? I always said, I want to write novels. And they would laugh.”
“It was very routine and it seemed like this is just what happens.”
“I think if there's a running theme through my books, it's complicity. You know, it's people who haven't committed the crime, but have known the crime is going on.”
“A whole generation of children has grown up and read that book and has got some insight into the Holocaust. And that itself, I think, is something to be proud of.”
“I'm good with solitude. I'm good traveling on my own. So I think a desert island would suit me quite nicely.”