The Book Thief

552 pages

English language

Published June 15, 2006

ISBN:
978-0-375-83100-3
Copied ISBN!

View on OpenLibrary

View on Inventaire

4 stars (1 review)

Narrated by Death, Markus Zusak's groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a young foster girl living outside of Munich in Nazi Germany. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she discovers something she can't resist--books. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever they are to be found.

With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, Liesel 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.

Markus Zusak, award winning author of I Am the Messenger, has crafted an unforgettable novel about the ability of books to feed the soul. (front flap)

16 editions

Review of 'The Book Thief' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Reading books about WWII in Germany is hard for me. I don't know, the scope of what transpired back then, and the thought that my parents were part of the Nazi youth groups, it's a bit much. At least until the middle of the book, I was pretty meh about it all. The narrator, the Denglish, the for me very weird sentence structure, it put me off.

But the longer you read, the more all those various characters of Himmel Street grow on you. From Liesel to Rosa to the mayor's wife or Rudy, they're all very touching characters. They make the book. And that's why in the end I came to love this book about a German family in a small Bavarian town near Munich, and all the various, touching, tragic events that happened during the war.