Published 2005 / Length 584 pages
Set in Nazi Germany during the Second World War, and narrated by the Grim Reaper himself, The Book Thief tells the story of Liesel Meminger, and through her explores the misery and the legacy of the Holocaust. Within the first few pages, Liesel witnesses the death of her brother and is sent to stay with a foster family, her own parents having been removed to a concentration camp for harbouring communist tendencies. Her foster parents are Hans and Rosa Hubermann, whom Liesel gradually begins to love and respect as she uncovers their many hidden qualities. Living with the Hubermanns in Himmel Street, on the outskirts of Munich, she comes to know many of the local characters, some of whom will change her life for ever. She forms a strong friendship with Rudy Steiner, a local boy who is obsessed with American athlete Jesse Owens, but an even stronger relationship gradually develops with Max Vandenburg, a Jewish runaway who spends the daytime hiding in the Hubermanns’ basement. As Liesel grows up, the war begins to affect every aspect of her life, until finally tragedy finds its way to Himmel Street.
‘Zusak’s Death is a cumbersome trope; he doesn’t solve the narrative problem so much as betray the author’s failure to recognize its nature. He is verbose and vapid, sentimental and simplistic, pleased with his own facile ironies, constantly inviting the reader’s connivance in tediously familiar postmodern games.’ – The Sunday Times
• Why do you think Zusak chose Death as the narrator for this story? What effect does his omniscient viewpoint have on the telling of it?
• The narrator describes Liesel as ‘one of those perpetual survivors – an expert at being left behind’. Is this an adequate description of her?
• What is the meaning of Max Vandenburg’s The Word Shaker? Is it fair to say that it’s the most significant of Liesel’s books?
• Given that we hardly see Liesel’s original family within the confines of the novel, why do you think Zusak made her a foster child?
• Markus Zusak is half Austrian and half German, although he was born and raised in Sydney, Australia.
• The Book Thief was inspired by the wartime tales Zusak’s mother told him, including the story of a child giving bread to Jewish prisoners that appears in the novel.
• The novel won the Teen Book Award 2007 from the Association of Jewish Libraries, and also triumphed in the Young Adult/Children’s category of the 2006 National Jewish Book Awards.
• The Diary of a Young Girl by ANNE FRANK – a Jewish girl’s real-life diary, written during the Nazi occupation of Holland.
• Reaper Man by TERRY PRATCHETT – a different fictional representation of Death.
• Everything Is Illuminated by JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER – tackling the Holocaust from an unusual perspective.