The Book Thief

Alfred A. Knopf

by Markus Zusak, Markus Zusak

Paperback, 592 pages

English language

Published Aug. 6, 2007 by Doubleday.

ISBN:: 978-0-385-61338-5
ASIN:: 0375831002

View on OpenLibrary

(126 reviews)

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.

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.

1 edition

Jonathan Arnold reviewed The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

A coming-of-age Holocaust book I actually love

5 stars

Zusak got me to enjoy reading about two things that normally leave me cold - coming-of-age stories and the Holocaust. For the former, I'm just not usually interested in reading about 12-year-old girls figuring out life. For the latter, I think the horrific, undeniably evil acts performed during the Holocaust can make it too easy to manipulate the reader's emotions.

But Zusak pulls it off, mostly through some amazing writing. I am not sure why this is categorized as a "Young Adult" novel, as it is full of big themes and awful, wonderful, acts. And every page had its share of lyrical passages that were just too numerous for me to keep writing down.

The Book Thief is about Liesel Meminger, a foster child living in a suburb of Munich during World War 2. Death is very busy but finds time to tell the story (yes, it is written from …

The Book Thief is about Liesel Meminger, a foster child living in a suburb of Munich during World War 2. Death is very busy but finds time to tell the story (yes, it is written from Death's point of view!) of Liesel, who manages to acquire reading material in this time of book burnings and mass hysteria. When a Jewish man comes to hide in their cellar, she shares her reading with him, as well as fellow bomb shelter people, while she tries to get through her tween years, stealing apples, avoiding Rudy Steiner's advances, and trying to stay out of trouble.

I know it doesn't sound very exciting, but I find it impossible to do the book, and the writing, justice. It took a bit to get into it, trying to figure out the writing style and the third-person perspective from Death. And there are some wild typographical exercises too. But it all rolls along in breathtaking fashion. An amazing read and one I highly recommend.

flashy_dragon reviewed The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Review of 'The Book Thief' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Death is going to be your guide, and he will tell you who is going to die, fairly early in the story. And, he will remind you.

And from there the suspense builds, bittersweet and tender as the main character, Liesel, and her friend, Rudy, grow, play, and try to understand the world in a time when everything is turned on its side.

This book captures why we live, why we love, and why we try, even though we know, at the end of it, where we are all going. We just don't know when. Or how. Or even who we will meet along the way, and how they may need our compassion, or us, theirs.

I can't help but read this book and wonder, like Death, how people can be so beautiful, and so ugly. How we can love so tremendously and hate so ferociously. How we are capable of so many things.

I think, or at least I hope, that you will find this book a challenge. Not because it is difficult to read, but because of how it treats our humanity. I suspect that you may look at your fellows with a bit more wonder, compassion. And in that regard, I feel that this book succeeds as a piece of literature, in that it shows us as we are, using the characters as the mirror and lens into our collective soul.

bab reviewed The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Review of 'The Book Thief' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

What a rollercoaster, the best book I've read

oox reviewed The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Review of 'The Book Thief' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I've never liked a book so much and yet read it so slowly, super busy right now and reading much less than I was a couple of months ago.

jordan reviewed The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Review of 'The Book Thief Publisher' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

Thankless, masturbatory Holocaust-porn, with "goodness-isn't-war-so-sad" and "wow-I-am-writing-in-a-fascinating-way-aren't-I" interludes so frequent that reading this felt like skipping the steak and just eating the fat.

...did I somehow read a different book than everyone else?

ManyRoads reviewed The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Review of 'The Book Thief' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Amazing and intriguing book. Well written and historically engrossing.

chrisamaphone reviewed The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Review of 'The Book Thief' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Really good and hard to explain. Funny, sad, witty, aching. Great turns of phrase, great pacing.

dersoi@bw.diaspodon.fr reviewed The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Review of 'The Book Thief Publisher' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This is one of the rare books that really made me feel. And I do not talk about curiosity or interest, but actual feelings.
This is a well written book, with a lot of originality, both in the way it is written and in the subject.
Who could think of the sad story of a little girl in Nazi Germany?

Siddhartha Golu reviewed The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Review of 'The Book Thief' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

"Even death has a heart."

This book is a poetry disguised as prose.

Such beautiful sentences, an unusual narrator (you don't come across death sharing his feelings every day), a phenomenal story - heartbreaking to say the least while also maintaining an air of inspiration, a brilliant depiction of History's one of the most devastating periods - living in Germany during World War II.

I cannot recommend this highly enough, people.

Kibrika reviewed The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Review of 'The Book Thief' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

To me the most poferful thing about this book was the way we (the readers) were held under constant pressure - you know something bad is going to happen, and you keep being afraid - is it going to happen now already? And when the bad thing finally does happen, it is still as bad (sad) as it was imagined to be and worse.

Jero reviewed The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Review of 'The Book Thief' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I cried a lot.

Vedang Manerikar reviewed The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Review of 'The Book Thief' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This book is incredible.

As someone born and brought up in India at the fag end of the 20th century, I find it difficult to empathise with the horrors of the past. Hitler was a bad man and killed a lot of Jews. Genghis Khan slaughtered thousands of people. For me, there is no emotion attached to these statements. These are just statistics from the past - definitely something to avoid, but not something to mourn over.

The beauty of this book is that it made me understand what "The Persecution of the Jews" actually means. It converted facts from history into incidents that happened to real people - people that I cared about. We have a vague idea of what words like cruelty, beauty, love and courage mean. We need to be reminded on a regular basis what these words feel like.

I'll cherish this book for a long …

GG reviewed The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Review of 'The Book Thief' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

The pros: Entertaining story, likable characters, great emotional payoff, the foreshadowing keeps you turning the pages.
The cons: Reads like it was written with a movie deal in mind. Foreshadowing is too heavy-handed. The use of Death as a character is gimmicky and doesn't really add much. Too many cliché tropes we've already read in a thousand other Holocaust narratives.
Overall, four stars. I'd recommend it.

Sandra reviewed The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Review of 'The Book Thief' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

meh, more like 2 1/2 stars. I didn't dislike this book, don't get me wrong. But I did not love it either. It was pretty light-weight to tell you the truth. Nothing special. I never really cared about any of the characters; never really got inside any of their heads. Seemed more like a young adult novel.

Oh, I see. It is a young adult novel... Well there you go.

jellybeyreads reviewed The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Review of 'The Book Thief' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Utterly magnificent.

1. Unusual choice of narrator giving a previously unseen perspective into the death and destruction of WWII.

2. I loved every character from the moment I met them. They are richly realized, flawed, and wonderful.

3. Semi-linear plot structure -- you know early on what happens to each character at the end of the book (it's WWII in Germany, it wouldn't be too hard to guess anyway), and I spent every page stupidly hoping it would somehow be different.

4. I wept for 30 straight pages. These are people I loved and they deserved so much better than the brutality of war and genocide and fascism. I am alternately excited for and dreading the film. I am a notorious Movie Cryer... I anticipate rivers will flow.

5. As I wept one thought played on a loop in my head: why do we do this to each other?

6. …