One of my great holiday reads this christmas was “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak.
Set in 1939, Nazi Germany. The novel centers around the experiences of a young girl called Liesel. This young girl is not Jewish but instead the orphaned daughter of two communist parents who were murdered when finally caught by the Nazis. Liesel spends most of the novel in the home of two poor but well-meaning foster parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann, who are patriotic enough not to be arrested, but rebillious enough that Hans has been refused admission to the Nazi party. Thus, through Liesel and the Hubermanns, we get a point of view of Nazi Germany to which we don’t normally see: not of the depraved and defiled victims of the Holocaust, nor of the gung-ho fundamentalist “Heil-Hiterl!”ing-every-five-seconds Nazis; but instead of those we rarely if ever hear from, those caught in the uncomfortable and unavoidable middle.
Oh yes, and the narrator, Death.
“I do not carry a sickle or a scythe.
I only wear a hooded black robe when it’s cold.
And I don’t have those skull-like
facial features you seem to enjoy
pinning on me from a distance. You
want to know what I truly look like?
I’ll help you out. Find yourself a mirror while I continue.”
In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.
The Book Thief is not one of those books you read compulsively, desperate to find out what’s on the next page. No. It is, in fact, better to read it slowly, in small doses, in a way that allows you to savor every word and absorb the power and the magic it contains. All the while, you know what’s going to happen. Death has no patience for mysteries.
cabramslibrary 