A boy climbs a mountain in search of family and finds the heart of darkness instead.
In 1935, seven-year-old Pierrot loses his parents and leaves his home in Paris for the mountains of Austria. His aunt works as a servant in a grand house overlooking the world, a place filled with soldiers, secrets, and power. The house belongs to Adolf Hitler.
Under his new guardian’s gaze, Pierrot’s innocence begins to fade. What starts as curiosity becomes devotion, and then complicity, as he learns how easily belief can be twisted by fear.
John Boyne’s The Boy at the Top of the Mountain is a haunting historical novel about innocence corrupted, the weight of guilt, and the long road toward redemption.
