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The Book Thief

1998

  • nyt:young-adult-paperback-monthly=2022-09-04
  • books and reading
  • fiction
  • jews
  • history
  • world war, 1939-1945
  • rescue
  • storytelling
  • death
  • novela australiana

The story

The extraordinary, beloved novel about the ability of books to feed the soul even in the darkest of times. When Death has a story to tell, you listen. It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement. In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak, author of I Am the Messenger, has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time. “The kind of book that can be life-changing.” —The New York Times

What it’s like

Spare, lyrical prose with a voice that keeps stepping back to observe, warm and wry even as the page darkens; the sensory world is a Molching street of coal smoke, cheap bread, accordion notes drifting through a kitchen, and the cellar's damp quiet, with the sky over Munich lit orange during the bombing raids. The mood is elegiac and tender, a bittersweet hush that suits a rainy Sunday or a long, quiet evening with the lamp on, though it is rarely soothing. Pacing is episodic and rhythmic, built from short chapters that linger on small domestic scenes before the story tightens; the emotional arc follows a neglected, stubborn girl slowly learning to trust a household and a community, and the storytelling itself becomes a source of comfort. Intensity is moderate and heavy in emotional weight: there is war-time violence, air raids, death of named characters, and the persecution of Jews, described with restraint rather than gore, with a few brutal moments that land hard. Not gentle, but not graphic. For readers who want literary fiction about books and reading, grief and ordinary courage, and who can handle a sorrowful, humane account of the Second World War.

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