The Book Thief - A Review

‘He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It's his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.’

It is not too rare when we find Death as a character of a story. The Hooded One, the Angel of the Night with his stereotypical scythe. However, of all the images that a characterization of Death might bring to mind, we can hardly imagine any of them saying something like this.

"I can be amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that's only the A's."

Welcome to the world of The Book Thief, Markus Zusak’s masterpiece about the life of a German child, Liesel Meminger, in turbulent WW-II Munich. Liesel is effectively an orphan. She never knew her father, her mother disappears after delivering her to her new foster parents, and her younger brother died on the train to Molching where the foster parents live. Death first encounters nine-year-old Liesel when her brother dies, and hangs around long enough to watch her steal her first book, The Gravedigger's Handbook, left lying in the snow by her brother's grave. And so begins an illustrious career of book thieving from as varied places as Nazi book burnings and the Mayor’s wife’s library, wherever books are to be found.

In the midst of these dangerous times, Liesel’s foster father hides a Jewish fist-fighter, Max Vandenburg, in his basement, and their lives are both opened up and closed down at the same time. He's the son of a friend of Hans from the first world war, the man who taught him the accordian. Hans had promised to help Max's mother if she ever needed it. Max and Liesel become close friends, and he writes an absolutely beautiful story for her, called The Standover Man. It's the story of Max, growing up and coming to Liesel's home, and it's painted over white-painted pages of Mein Kampf, which you can see through the paint.

"Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day. That was the business of hiding a Jew."

The book is hauntingly beautiful, both in terms of the story and the style of story telling. The terrifying ultimate doom that a war brings is beautifully portrayed through the melodramatic pronouncements of the end at the very beginning. The eventuality of Death and destruction that the War brings is painted in vivid colours. Zusak also creates some amazing characters, Death being perhaps the best of them. Death is stripped off the morbidity that surrounds his standard portrayal and given a human look. He is someone with feelings, lonely, strangely attracted to children, gentle with the souls entrusted to him. He is an eternal observer of the human race, haunted by its follies and weighed down by the lost memories of forgotten mortals. Liesel is very real, a child living a child's life of soccer in the street, stolen pleasures, sudden passions and a full heart. All the while bombs drop, maimed veterans hang themselves, Gestapo take children away and a delirious skeletal Jew fist-fights with the Fuhrer of the German people. The foul mouthed Rosa Huberman, and the kind silver-eyed accordion-playing Hans Huberman (Liesel’s foster parents) instill many a light moment into the story, just as their love for each other, Liesel and Max can make one teary-eyed. In one of the most moving parts of the story, Rosa Huberman goes to asleep every night after Hans leaves for war sitting upright with his accordion strapped to her.

My personal favorite character in the book would however, have to be Rudy Steiner. A 9 year old deemed insane by most for his worshipful admiration of the black athlete Jesse Owens, Rudy creates some of the most intense, poignant yet innocent parts of the story. Liesel’s best friend and fellow book thief, Rudy’s naiveté, kindness, his glorious athletic feats, his intense need for a success to redeem himself in his own eyes and his unfaltering love for Liesel is sure to take you back to your own childhood.

‘In years to come, he would be a giver of bread, not a stealer - proof again of the contradictory human being. So much good, so much evil. Just add water.’


The book is definitely not a light read. At times, it can even border on the morbid. The little peeks into the future provided by Death fill every page with the predominant fear of the eventual. Only a writer of Zusak’s genius can make it work, painting the vivid landscape of a past tainted by the blood of millions through the eyes of the innocent and the eternal at the same time. This is a book about the power of language and words, and the love and respect they inspire. Perhaps it is just as fitting that Zusak uses his talent to bring to life this passion in the story and also in the reader.

With this book, Zusak has proved himself to be a master lyricist of the written word. His haunting, profound, almost poetic description of the lives in a small town stays like a lilting symphony of words in your mind and lifts your spirits. All-in-all, a Must Read.