Going through the novel with death as the narrator helps us understand it more as he explores the various emotions inherent in humans like love, kindness, cruelty, wickedness, and more. This is a unique trait in literature, giving death a compassionate attribute. At times, death expresses sorrow as having to collect so many souls, which usually happens when there is conflict and war in any nation. Death lets us know what happened during those dark periods in Germany and the hardships experienced by human beings. It was a hugely ambitious story with Death as the narrator which makes it unique in that aspect. The novel tells the story of what happened during the holocaust and the second world war in Germany. She suffers and is bullied in school because she couldn’t read and then learns of communism and the Nazis and the Jews. It helps the reader move through her emotions as she suffers from the loss of her own family to meeting a new family. Anyway, this one is focused on young adults with a young teenage girl as the protagonist. Yet, The Book Thief is as interesting if not more than his other novels. He also uses a female as his principal character, unlike his previous works where males are the protagonist. He sets it in the fictional town of Molching, which is near Munich Germany. He moved away from Australia where he has set the previous novels and went to Germany during World War II for this novel. Zusak’s other books were more literary works but this one was directed to young adults.

Markus Zusak deviated a bit from his previous novels in The Book Thief.

It was her reading of books in the basement of their house that helped her escape destruction along with others when their street was bombed. Every other person in their house and surrounding died in the bomb blast. She also rescued some books that were being burned by the Nazis to celebrate Hitler’s birthday. She started stealing so she could satisfy her thirst for knowledge and was later encouraged by a woman she stole from, the Mayor’s wife. While living with her foster parents, she learns how to read and this opens up her understanding of the world. She learned the power of words and how she can affect the people around her using words. The young orphan girl Liesel Meminger lost her family due to the political crisis in Germany at that time and then went to live with Hand and Rosa Hubermann.

Markus the book thief