The Book Thief

This is a novel about daily life in a poor quarter of a small town near Munich, seen through the eyes of a young German girl called Liesel. She arrives there traumatised by the death of her younger brother and her separation from her mother. Her adoptive parents are Hans and Rosa, whose children have grown up and left home. Hans is an honest and principled man, who has been excluded from the Nazi Party and therefore struggles to find work. So the family have to exist on bread and soup, and the soup tastes bad because, according to LIesel, Rosa is a bad cook. Hans is a compassionate man. Liesel wakes up in the night, haunted by the same nightmare, over and over again. But Hans is there every night to comfort her, and that's where her determination to learn to read and her passion for books comes from.

Given the terrible events that are unfolding in Germany at this time, this could be a very grim read. It is not, because Liesel is a spirited child who leads an adventurous life with her best friend Rudy. They are no angels, but their petty thieving is dwarfed by the evil being committed around them.The story has a lightness of touch, a simple, childlike style, and there is plenty of black humour against the Nazi regime.

As well as Hans Hubermann's empathy for the traumatised girl, there is the empathy of the whole family towards the man they hide in their home, risking their lives to do so. Liesel in particular befriends this wretched man and they form a close attachment. So when later she witnesses Jews being forced to parade through the streets, beaten if they fall to the ground, she feels compassion for them. Hans cannot help giving these starving men bread and he is beaten for it, then sent away to do a dangerous job.

Through all the cruelty, the madness, Hans, Liesel, Rosa and Rudy remain true to themselves, to their belief in justice, goodness and compassion. This shows readers who have viewed Germans from the Allied, or enemy side, that not all Germans followed Nazi propaganda blindly, that despite the tremendous pressures to conform, some people were principled and brave enough to follow their conscience. This must have taken a lo tof courage.

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Author(s): 
Markus Zusak
Year: 
2005
Book type: 
Themes: 
Country: 
Germany