A young girl named Liesel is sent to live with foster parents in Nazi Germany during WWII. Narrated by Death, the story follows Liesel as she steals books, learns to read, and finds solace in words amidst the fear and destruction of the war. The narrative explores themes of humanity, kindness, and cruelty as she her family hide a Jewish man in their basement.
Death becomes a character whom we come to respect and even feel sorry for by the end. The narration certainly puts an odd perspective on the story. Much of what Death says, is philosophical and very beautiful. On her journey to her new home, Liesel’s younger brother dies and she steals her first book: The Gravedigger’s Handbook. Haunted by nightmares every night of her brother, Liesel and her new papa set themselves the challenge of reading the book, Liesel’s last link to her brother.
The book is an eye opener because it’s from the perspective of somebody living in Germany, making you realise that people in Germany became victims of the war, that they were not all evil as they are often portrayed. The sadness around Liesel’s creeps up on you because it leaves us with a sense of guilt due to British bombardments and how many people were killed……so begins a love affair with books and words. Soon she is pilfering books from Nazi book burnings, the Mayor’s wife’s library, wherever there are books to be found. It is superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, certainly the best of the six books Markus Zusak has written.
It is 1939, Nazi Germany..the country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. Since its publication in 2005, THE BOOK THIEF has sold over 17 million copies. For a generation, it has served to illuminate the unfathomable events of a horrifying time through the optics of a youthful heroine– where books, words and stories form a lens of deepest empathy. She soon learns that the story of war has countless stories. The book has unsettling moments, it is thought-provoking, life-affirming in triumph and tragedy; It is a novel of breathtaking scope.
As the war intensifies, Nazi soldiers, begin parading Jewish prisoners through the town on their way to Dachau concentration camps. The book was banned many times because of its surreal concepts, heavy plots and children’s perspectives on the German army. It certainly fields a dystopian narrative with profanity, vulgarity and sexual overtones. The overarching conflicts in the book are the Nazi Party versus Jews and other races and religions, mostly experienced from the perspective of non-Jewish German kids.
Ultimately it’s a book about the power of words to make worlds… and who would have thought that a book narrated by Death would be so good?
