The Book Thief

Markus Zusak
2023-06-18T16:30:39-07:00

In this very strangely structured but good novel, a powerful entity, Death, tells us about strange humans. How they are very peculiar, for example, words. They are evil and extremely dangerous, yet beautiful. Death then proceeds to inform us of a story that perfectly embodies the humanness of humans, a story of book thieving and Germany. In 1939, it seems that a girl by the name of Liesel Meminger moves into a quaint town named Molching, based on Olching, near the great city of Munich. So days go by, and being very perturbed by her lack of reading-ability, the Book Thief–Liesel practices reading in the basement with her foster father Hans. And that is how the Book Thief learns about the power of words and books. But the lives of the Hubermanns, Liesel's foster parents, get turned upside down when a mysterious Jew by the name of Max Vandenburg arrives. Apparently, Hans has sort of rashly decided to help the son of his dead friend. Much pain and suffering and bombs and death and war follow. The writing style is like nothing I have seen before. There are many long, metaphorical sentences. And short ones too. The author, Markus Zusak, is clearly very good at this because the storytelling is awesome. Though I wouldn't recommend this for people in need of short and easy reads, as it takes concentration to read. But overall, I think you should probably read this if you are interested in Germany or historical fiction or a thought-provoking book.