Overview
Narrated by Death, the story follows Liesel Meminger, a young girl in Nazi Germany who finds solace in stealing books and sharing them with others.
Zusak published The Book Thief in Australia in 2005; it was released in the United States in 2006 as a young-adult novel before being widely read across ages. The novel is narrated by Death and tells the story of Liesel Meminger, a young girl living with foster parents in Nazi Germany who steals books and shelters a Jewish man in the basement. The book has sold more than sixteen million copies.
Key Ideas
Words have power
In a world where words are used as weapons by the Nazi regime, Liesel discovers their power to heal and connect.
Humanity in darkness
Acts of kindness persist even in the darkest chapters of human history.
Death is a narrator with a heart
The unique perspective reminds us that every life has a story worth telling.
Who should read this
Readers across ages who want a Holocaust-era novel told from an unusual angle — that of ordinary German citizens rather than the camp victims usually at the centre of such stories. Zusak's choice of Death as narrator gives the book an elegiac warmth that prevents the material from becoming unbearable.
Who might skip it
Skip if you dislike narratorial gimmickry — Death-as-narrator works beautifully for some readers and feels affected to others. Skip also if you're uncomfortable with a Holocaust novel that centres on German characters; some critics have felt the book softens the history in ways they don't like.
The verdict
A novel that took several attempts before it landed for me, but once it did, it stayed. Zusak's sentences are unusual — often fragmentary, often poetic — and the form is distinctive enough that imitators have struggled to reproduce it. The chapters on Max in the basement are some of the best-written pages about hiding I have read.
"I am haunted by humans."
— Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
If you liked this
Bridge of Clay, Zusak's 2018 novel. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank for the primary source.