The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The narration by Death is at once strikingly beautiful and shockingly sad. Labelling the book merely as a historical fiction is an understatement. Indeed, it opens in 1939 Nazi Germany and the beautiful narrative follows around the book thief for the next six years, but it is a young adult book which traces the development of Liesel’s psyche, and most importantly how books, literature and art can save people in times of acute misfortune and anarchy.

Liesel steals a book before she can even read and she becomes the person handing out hope to people in anticipation of death in a bunker. You know that the book is not going to end well and then the foster parents of the girl help hide a Jew in their basement. The narrative delivered directly from the mouth of death gives it layers of meanings and opens up a perspective not attempted before. As the innocent Jew cowers in a cold basement and the girl talks of the weather and brings him newspaper, the warmth of kindness from a German to a Jew, sinks in.

In the background the slaughtering continues. The echo of the First World War is brought in with Hans and the father of Max and the lost son of the Mayor’s Wife. The men, damaged and distraughted try to settle into the life of normal society as war rages on. The inevitability of the ending looms on the horizon and the anxiety grows as the pages thin on the right side.

The nine-year-old Liesel is struck with the grief of loss when she first arrives to Himmel Street. Losing her mother so soon after burying her little brother; haunts her throughout the book. Her responses are only relaxed when she is with Rudy, her bestfriend. As the youth camps train the children to lead the Nazi nation in the near future, the innocence of childhood is brutally robbed from the children of the story.

Liesel’s courage and hope carries her through the over six hundred page long book. The lack of food, education, freedom and security of life stares right in the face of the reader as the Hubermann family eat a quiet dinner of pea soups every day. The presence of music and words and sketches bring in the rays of sunshine in the otherwise gloomy and dark plot.

The instances of kindness in a piece of bread from a hungry German to a prisoner Jew, a teddy bear to a dying man and a story handmade by a secret guest shows the other side, the common side of Germany under Hitler’s autocracy. The utter vulnerability of the people of the country who stood aside as the nation wrecked havoc on them is paralysing.

I took my time to review this book and I still cannot articulate the feelings it invoked in a booklover. Marked by loss and grief and death, the story ends with its promised note, while the book thief survives, most of the other characters do not. More than a historical account, the plot explores humanity and the response of ordinary humans in the face of crisis and chaos. The critique of cruel humanity is shown from a distance achieved by the narrative of Death as it roams among us and is from another realm altogether. I would give this book  5 out of 5.