‘Perched on the cusp between grown-up and young adult fiction… it deplores human misery and celebrates the power of language’ - The New York TimesSet in Germany during the Second World War and narrated by the poetic and haunting voice of Death, The Book Thief is a remarkable story. Liesel Meminger and her younger brother are en route to live with a German foster family in Munich.Along the way, Death takes Liesel’s brother. At his graveside, she discovers a black book with silver writing on it lodged in the snow - The Gravedigger’s Handbook. With the help of her foster father, Liesel learns to read. With no money to buy her coveted books, Liesel secretly snatches them, just as she and her family secretly hide a Jewish man named Max in their basement. Soon Liesel is reading to her neighbours, as well as to her new Jewish friend, who writes stories for Liesel on the painted pages of a copy of Mein Kampf. As the story progresses, Death takes several lives, but Liesel and her books continue to escape him. Liesel’s story is ultimately one of hope, a story about a girl who finds and latches onto fragments of beauty amidst incredible sadness and hardship. The Book Thief was published in America in spring 2006, where it reached no. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list, and to date has sold in excess of 100,000 copies, an astounding number for a young adult book. Markus appeared on Good Morning America, and the book was widely reviewed; it was equally well received in the author’s native Australia.Markus has based some of The Book Thief on stories that his mother told him when he was a child. The imagery he takes from her memories of living in wartime Austria make the book all the more powerful and arresting.
His story of Liesel, the girl who loved words, is a statement of the importance of words for the Nazi regime, and what they were able to make people believe and do. The Book Thief has been optioned for film.
Markus Zusak, a prize-winning children's author, lives in Australia with his wife and young baby daughter.
The Book Thief has been published in two individual versions simultaneously by The Bodley Head (for children) and Doubleday (for adults). Each version has its own distinctive artwork. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak