Interview

A conversation with Markus Zusak about The Book Thief - a story about, among other things: A girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery.

A conversation with Markus Zusak about The Book Thief

Q: What inspired you to write about a hungry, illiterate girl who has such a desire to read that she steals books?

A: I think it's just working on a book over and over again. I heard stories of cities on fire, teenagers who were whipped for giving starving Jewish people bread on their way to concentration camps, and people huddled in bomb shelters. . . . But I also had a story about a book thief set in my hometown of Sydney. I just brought the two ideas together and realized the importance of words in Nazi Germany. I thought of Hitler destroying people with words, and now I had a girl who was stealing them back, as she read books with the young Jewish man in her basement and calmed people down in the bomb shelters. She writes her own story–and it's a beautiful story– through the ugliness of the world that surrounds her.


Q: How did you decide to make Death the narrator of the book?

A: With great difficulty! I thought, "Here's a book set during war. Everyone says war and death are best friends." Death is ever-present during war, so here was the perfect choice to narrate The Book Thief. At first, though, Death was too mean. He was ...