The Boy Who Didn't Want to Die: A Graphic Memoir

This is a story of survival, of love between mother and son and of enduring hope in the face ofunspeakable hardship. Now availablein graphic novel format.On an extraordinary journey, made by a boy of five through war-torn Europe in 1944 and 1945, Peter travels with his parents from a small Hungarian town, through Austria and then Germany. Along the journey, Peter realises that the adventure is really a nightmare: sleeping in a tent and then under the sky, catching butterflies in the meadows, watching bombs falling from the blue sky outside Vienna, learning maths from his mother in Belsen. All this is drawn against a background of terror, starvation, infection and his father's and grandmother's deaths, stunningly illustrated in black and cyan used to great effect.

The cheapest new copy of The Boy Who Didn't Want to Die: A Graphic Memoir is £6.99 at Scholastic. Prices checked 14 Nov 2026

More by Peter Lantos

More by Peter Lantos