The Book Thief is a novel written by
Markus Zusak, an Australian writer also known for other novels as Cartas
Cruzadas. He published this book in 2005 and with it, he won the literary prize
Michale L. Printz in 2007 and he achieved a record of 105 weeks on the list of
youth novels of the New York Times.
An interesting
fact related to the biography of this author is the interest that he have,
since he was little, about the Nazi Germany, the bombing of Munich, the Jewish
abuse,… interests that linked with the different experiences lived by their
parents, from Australia and Germany, during the Second World
War helped and inspired him to write The Book Thief.
Unlike other works
as El niño del pijama de rayas of John Boyne, La bibliotecaria de Auschwitz of Antonio Iturbe or Bajo el mismo cielo of Núria Pradas and in which the
authors talk about what was lived during the Second World War from different
points of view: the son of a nazi general, Jews and prisoners in a
concentration camp,… the The Book Thief does it from a quite
different and less common perspective: from the point of view of German
citizens who, as far as is possible, try to go on with their lives as the war
is progressing. That way, the history of the novel revolves around the host
family of Liessel Meissl, a little Germany girl who because of the war, she
would live various adventures and misadventures, she would meet different
characters that will mark her life as Rudy, a guy obsessed with Jesse Owen and
who will became her best friend; Max, a young Jewish that Liessel family will
try to hide in his basement and many others as Hans or Rosa, characters that
will teach her the love of reading and writing. In fact, as the novel
progresses, we will realize the reason of the tittle: Liessel, after get to her
new home and after the death of his little brother, she develops a great love
for the reading and writing thanks to her new father and her new friend Max and
for this, she will try to gather and collect all books she found and even, she
will steal some books from the library of the woman of the mayor of the city
who will baptize she as “the book thief”.
Another
singularity of this book that makes it special and different is the narrator:
the death. She (not the typical one wearing a layer and holding a sickle) tells
us, at the beginning of the novel, that there are few stories in the world
worthwhile tell but that the book thief is one of those.
Personally, books
with this kind of thematic, I mean, based on the First or Second World War,
about the Nazi concentration camps and other historical facts are of my
favourites whereby I have read a lot of them and I have to say that this
one in particular, The Book Thief, surprise you for the originality of the
narrator and for other things as the topics discusses or rather, the way that
the author explains them because he doesn't focus, as the main majority, in the
conflict itself or in the refugees or prisoners lives, but history
reveals us the life of the German population during the war: how young
people were recruited, families without fathers, how the population reacts in
the middle of the night in front of the sirens that announced possibleairstrikes and also, the more depressive and dark episodes
of the war are mix with friendship or comic episodes and all narrated by an a compassionate death.
For all of this I
think that, independently whether you like this genre or not, you should give a
chance to this novel because it has a complete history inside, and if you don't feel like reading, last year was relased the film!!
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