The Book Thief
Here is a small fact…
from mz
When you start a career in writing, you know it’s going to be a long shot to even get published, let alone have a book that becomes a surprise international success. In that sense, I had especially small hopes for The Book Thief. Even though I knew it had come from another place inside me, I thought it would be my least successful book. But I was so alive while I was writing; I had to see it through.
It was supposed to be a novella – maybe 100 or 120 pages. It turned out to be a 580-page book that means the world to me. Maybe my biggest advantage was thinking no-one would ever read it. For that reason, every time a risk was to be taken, I took it. Sometimes I think I went slightly too far with the strangeness of the language, and going all the way with emotion…but I stand by the idea that it was better to go too far than not far enough. The fact that readers have embraced it the way they have is still a great shock to me. I’m so grateful to everyone who has taken this story and its characters so much to heart.
It’s the book that changed my life.
from the publisher
It is 1939, Nazi Germany.
The country is holding its breath.
Death has never been busier, and will become busier still.
By her brother’s graveside, Liesel’s life is changed when she picks up an object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger’s Handbook, and it’s her first act of book thievery.
So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel 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 Jewish fist-fighter in their basement, Liesel’s world is both opened up and closed down.
The Book Thief is a story about the power of words to make worlds. Award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring books of our time.
final note
I was still so young…starting when I was twenty-seven, and published not long after I turned thirty. But what I really mean is that I was young in writing terms. I was still quite desperate, which meant it was easier to shrug off the fears. There was nothing really to lose.
I did wonder what people might say about it, if they even read it at all, and I came to one conclusion that helped me through. I thought, They can criticise it, not like it, or say it’s no good, but they can’t say it doesn’t have ideas, or that it’s not ambitious. I knew it was a big attempt at something, and that would have to be enough.
I finished it over two long, brutal-but-joyful nights, and no idea of the world to come.