> Skip to content

Article  •  16 June 2016

 

Silence is deadly

Liam Pieper’s The Toymaker asks people to speak up when it matters.

Bold, dark and compelling, Liam Pieper’s The Toymaker is a novel about privilege, fear and the great harm we can do when we are afraid of losing what we hold dear. Here Liam offers some insights into the places, people and events that helped him shape this unflinching examination of society…

The Toymaker is an idea that’s been rattling around in my subconscious since I was a child. Growing up, most of my friends were the grandchildren of Jewish émigrés from Eastern Europe, and I was very aware of the things their grandparents had suffered. I was always a little awed by the idea that these people could endure the evils of the Holocaust, and then just try to start again in a country that was, for the most part, indifferent to your suffering, that had watched it happen and hadn’t tried to stop it until way too late.

Arkady Kulakov, or at least the person he pretends to be, is a composite of several wise, gentle men I knew growing up. In Europe they had been going about living their lives, and suddenly the world went mad around them, and they lost everything. There was a certain sadness to them, and also a secrecy ­– they had seen things no human should, done things to survive they would never tell anyone.

I struggled for a long time with the ethics of writing about the Holocaust. The last thing I wanted was to be exploitative of past horrors, or to disrespect the memory of the millions of victims or the legacy of the survivors. It is a cheap shot from all sides of politics to compare the elements of your society that make you uncomfortable with the Nazis.

However, I’ve been watching, ever since the Tampa affair, my own country become increasingly hostile to the suffering of others, long past the point of indifference. As a novelist my intent is not to be political, but I do have a duty to be compassionate, and I worry that a government can get a boost in the polls by treating abused and scared refugees to state-sanctioned cruelty. A nation can be judged by how it treats those from outside who need its help. It’s worth remembering that the USA turned down Anne Frank’s request for asylum. It’s worth remembering how much we forget when it’s convenient to us.

This book was written in bits and pieces across four years, a large part of it in India, where President Modi was orchestrating one of the furthest-right governments India has ever seen. This is a guy who has used race riots for political gain, so the whole time I was there, all my friends had this creeping sense of dread about the direction of society. In towns not far from us, books were being burned. A novelist friend of mine was harassed by a far-right group until he quit writing altogether and went into hiding to save his family.

It only really started to take its final shape, though, when I was lucky enough to be invited by UNESCO to come and finish it in Europe as the inaugural creative resident of The City of Literature Prague. 

It’s impossible to over-emphasise how important this opportunity was to writing The Toymaker. I’d been researching the story my whole life, but it’s a whole different thing to be able to walk the streets I was writing about, to go to Auschwitz, to talk to survivors. While all this was going on, I was in Europe in the middle of the Syrian refugee crisis, and I was watching Europe grow more right-wing by the day. They were stopping international buses and checking everybody’s ID, questioning all the brown people. When I was in Krakow to research, a mob burned an effigy of a Jew in the middle of town. It was strange and surreal.

But Prague is where The Toymaker took its final shape, when all these disparate threads started to crystallise in my mind. I went to Bubny station, which is where all of Prague’s Jews boarded trains to be taken to their deaths, amongst, them, incidentally, Kafka’s family. It’s just an ordinary station, still functioning, with commuter trains rolling through it all day. It was the same on the day of the genocide. Everybody just went to work, and ignored what was happening.

There’s a monument there now, the only sign of what happened. The railway tracks the trains to Auschwitz left on have been rerouted and head up towards the sky, to heaven. It’s very striking. The idea is that people on the way to work will see this thing, this railway to the sky which looks fundamentally wrong, and ask what it is, and think about it – the way they didn’t back in 1942. If enough of those commuters had spoken up, things would have been very different. Silence is deadly.

This book is my answer to that monument. I see what is happening in the world right now, and it terrifies me that too few people are thinking about it. This is my attempt at getting people to think about where their society is going, not to be silent about it.

Feature Title

The Toymaker
Bold, dark and compelling, The Toymaker is a novel about privilege, fear and the great harm we can do when we are afraid of losing what we hold dear.
Read more

More features

See all
Book clubs
The Toymaker book club notes

Liam Pieper’s The Toymaker: a gripping book club selection.

Article
DK Catalogue 2025

Knowledge is adventure.

Article
Penguin's 2025 Bingo

Play the new Penguin Bingo with us. How long will it take you to get bingo?

Article
Real Readers Review: The Favourites by Layne Fargo

A reimagining of the tempestuous romance of Wuthering Heights set in the cut-throat world of professional ice skating… what do readers really think about The Favourites?

Article
How to read more this year

Got 'read more books' on your resolution list? We've some hacks to help with that.

Article
Great audiobooks for your summer reading

Looking for some summer audiobook inspiration? Here are our top picks of great reads to listen to on your summer adventures!

Article
What we're gifting this Christmas

Want some insider intel on the best books to gift this Christmas? Read on for what the Penguin Random House New Zealand team are ACTUALLY gifting!

Article
QUIZ: Which Murakami book should you start with?

Never read Murakami and wondering where to begin? Take this fun quiz to figure out which book you should read first.

Article
Some of the most anticipated YA books of 2025

Check out some of the best YA books coming in 2025.

Article
Where to start with Jilly Cooper

Always wanted to try a Jilly Cooper book but weren’t sure where to start? Here's why you'll fall in love with her books and a recommended reading order to get you started, from super fan Alex Collingwood

Article
Where to start with... the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books

If you’re completely new to Jeff Kinney’s world-famous Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, can we just start by saying that we’re completely and utterly jealous of you? Get ready for one serious reading binge and warn your sides, because they’re about to split.

Article
Top Reads for October

We're star struck with our top reads for October.

Looking for more articles?

See all articles
penguin pop image
penguin pop image