LooseLeaves Caroline WalshCome April, Irish writer John Boyne will be packing his bags for Budapest, where filming is scheduled to start on his whirlwind bestselling novel, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. By the time it hits the screen, however, it will be called The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, taking the spelling that's on the US edition. It is being financed by Miramax - now owned by Disney - and produced by David Heyman of the Harry Potter movies. Mark Herman will direct.
Casting, always especially crucial when (as in this case) children are involved, is still in progress. Herman also wrote the screenplay, and Boyne - who read drafts, offered notes and met the director and the producer - is cautiously optimistic about the screen version. Shooting is scheduled to last nine weeks, with the film due in cinemas by Christmas.
Boyne's tale of the friendship between Bruno, the commandant's son, and Schmuel, the thin boy in his uniform of striped pyjamas on the other side of the fence at Auschwitz, will come out in German and in Hebrew later this year. While on tour in the US, Boyne has been approached by Holocaust survivors at book fairs and events. One, a survivor of Auschwitz, reiterated to him that the main thing was that people still tell the story. "One important realisation for me is that my generation [he's 35] is the last generation that will get to speak to survivors of the Holocaust and talk to them first-hand. The onus to remember will always be there down the generations to come but it's a privilege to still be able to hear it first-hand," says Boyne, whose next novel will be published by Transworld next year. Provisionally called Bligh and I, it's a historical novel narrated by the 14-year-old servant boy of Captain Bligh, he of Mutiny on the Bounty fame.
Heaney's bench marks
Tomorrow at 3pm in the Devil's Glen Wood in Ashford, Co Wicklow, a forest trail will be dedicated to Seamus Heaney (below) - the Seamus Heaney Walk. It's all part of National Tree Week. Along the walkway are a number of benches inscribed with work by Heaney and another writer with strong
Wicklow associations, JM Synge. Devil's Glen was owned by the Synge family until it was taken over by the State. Derek Verso, administrator of Sculpture in Woodland,
which is behind the initiative, had a nice surprise while organising the project. "Seamus Heaney selected all the extracts for the benches, and when we managed to come up with some extra benches we needed more poetry. I rang him very timidly and he sent me back two pieces of verse specially penned for the occasion within 24 hours." Here's one:
Walker, pause now, and sit. Be quiet
here.
Inhale the breath of life in a breath of
air.
Young, American and talented
It's out - Granta magazine's list of Best of Young American Novelists II was announced this week in New York. Intended as a snapshot of a literary generation, inclusion on Granta's lists of the best of British novelists, which has been published once a decade since 1983, is a real feather in a young writer's cap. The first American list was published in 1996. Now the next issue of the magazine, Granta 97, will be devoted to new work by 21 writers aged 35 and under that the jury deems the most interesting new young voices in American fiction.
Theses 21 are: Daniel Alarcón, Kevin Brockmeier, Judy Budnitz, Christopher Coake, Anthony Doerr, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nell Freudenberger, Olga Grushin, Dara Horn, Gabe Hudson, Uzodimna Iweala, Nicole Krauss, Rattawut Lapcharoensap, Yiyun Li, Maile Meloy, ZZ Packer, Jess Row, Karen Russell, Akhil Sharma, Gary Shteyngart and John Wray.
See www.bestyoungnovelists.com.
There's no shushing this lot
Over the coming months a new series, Poetry in the Library, gets under way, with readings by poets in libraries.
The series will be launched on Tuesday as part of Library Ireland Week, with Tony Curtis and Macdara Woods reading at 6pm in Pearse Street Library in Dublin. Michael Coady, Tom McCarthy, Derek Mahon and Gerald Dawe are among the poets reading throughout the country.
The programme will take in the islands, with Galway County Libraries welcoming Yvonne Cullen to Inishbofin Library, where she will read as part of the Inishbofin Arts Festival on Saturday, May 12th. See also www.library.ie.