![]() The two strike up an odd friendship that nurtures Liesel’s love of words.ĭespite the tense wartime atmosphere in Molching, the Hubermanns shelter a young Jewish man named Max in their basement. Liesel’s attraction for books intensifies, and she steals several more volumes until the mayor’s wife, Frau Hermann, grants her access to the mansion’s library. Over time, she adjusts to life in Molching, joins the local soccer team, becomes friends with a boy named Rudy Steiner, and helps Rosa with her laundry business. She keeps it with her always after she’s entrusted to the care of kindly Hans Hubermann and his brusque wife, Rosa.Īt first, Liesel suffers from nightmares about her dead brother, but Hans comforts her. After his burial, Liesel steals a book she sees sticking out of the snow in the graveyard: The Grave Digger’s Handbook. In 1939, as nine-year-old Liesel Meminger is traveling by train with her mother and younger brother to meet their new foster family, her brother dies unexpectedly. In the process, he explores the themes of wartime mortality, the human paradox, and, above all else, the power of words. He becomes enthralled with the narrative and presents it to the reader. It is narrated from the omniscient perspective of Death, who tells the reader the tale of Liesel Meminger, an orphan who demonstrates an odd fascination with the written word and begins to steal books at the age of nine.īy the end of the tale, the girl has written her own book, entitled The Book Thief, which falls into Death’s hands. The Book Thief is set in the Munich suburb of Molching, Germany, during the wartime years of 1939 to 1944. However, Zusak claims that he only borrowed from the tales his parents told about the war years in Germany. The novel is intended for readers 12 and up and is categorized as Teen and Young Adult Holocaust Historical Fiction and Teen and Young Adult Military Historical Fiction.īecause the author’s heritage is German / Austrian, and his parents emigrated to Sydney during the 1950s, readers have speculated that The Book Thief might be a family biography. It became a motion picture in 2013, starring Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson. When first published, The Book Thief became a #1 New York Times bestseller and was a nominee of PBS’s The Great American Read as one of America’s best-loved novels.
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