Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
Featured Book
Lyrical writing that gives new form to the well-trodden subject matter of the Holocaust
Death narrates this now-iconic young adult novel about an illiterate young girl whose hunger for reading incites her to steal books, beginning with the gravediggers manual she finds at the cemetery where her younger brother is buried. When the war begins, Liesel Meminger is sent to live with a foster family in the town of Molching. Her foster father teachers her to read and her new best friend (and would-be paramour) Rudy Steiner assists her on her thieving missions — some designed to help themselves in wartime poverty, others to rebel against the atrocities of Nazism. In the meantime, Liesel’s foster parents take in a Jew, hiding him in their basement from the S.S. As his relationship with Liesel warms, Max writes new books especially for her, painting over pages of Mein Kampf with his own illustrations. With Death as the storyteller and the Holocaust as the historical backdrop, the plot has a certain inevitability — we all know how this will end. Nevertheless, Zusak illuminates the humanity of his foul-mouthed, mostly well-meaning characters in their efforts to both resist and survive and his lyrical writing gives new form to well-trodden subject matter.
