Have You Read? The Book Thief

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The novel follows the story of Liesel, a nine year old girl living on Himmel Street with her foster parents. Her mother and father have been taken away to a concentration camp. She steals books. At some point, she will wonder when they became so important to her: “Was it when she first set eyes on the room with shelves and shelves of them? Or when Max Vandenburg arrived on Himmel Street with handfuls of suffering and Hitler’s Mein Kampf? Was it reading in the shelters? The last parade to Dachau?” This is the story of what happens to the inhabitants of her street as the bombs begin to fall, featuring a girl, an accordionist, a Jewish fist fighter, some fanatical Germans, and quite a lot of thievery.

Nazi Germany has been a much-canvassed subject of books and films for decades, so what sets this story apart? For one, it is seen through the eyes of a young girl, who struggles to understand the labels that have been thrust upon her family (“A strange word: Kommunist.”) But this is not The Diary of Anne Frank, nor is it The Boy in Striped Pyjamas. Written with an amazingly poignant tone, this book manages to be witty and heart-wrenchingly sad at the same time. It is this tone that makes The Book Thief stand out from the reams of other World War II fiction. It is enough to make any reader weep.

Honestly the most moving and immeasurably tragic tale I have ever read. A masterful and practically flawless story-teller, Zusak portrays suffering with an honesty and intensity that is almost painful. It is a cliché to say “if you read one book this summer, read this”, but this novel truly deserves it – if you read one book this decade, let it be The Book Thief.

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