John Boyne accidentally includes Zelda video game monsters in novel

Novelist says details from careless Google search are quite funny' and he will leave his book as is after reader spots Octoroks and Lizalfos in his new book

John Boyne, the award-winning author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, has acknowledged that a cursory Google led to him accidentally including monsters from the popular video game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in his new novel.

Boyne's A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom opens in AD1 and ends 2,000 years later, following a narrator and his family. In one section, the narrator sets out to poison Attila the Hun, using ingredients including an Octorok eyeball" and the tail of the red lizalfos and four Hylian shrooms".