Media Reviews

New York Times - Janet Maslin The Book Thief will be appreciated for Mr. Zusak's audacity, also on display in his earlier I Am the Messenger. It will be widely read and admired because it tells a story in which books become treasures.

USA Today - Carol Memmott The Book Thief is unsettling and unsentimental, yet ultimately poetic. Its grimness and tragedy run through the reader's mind like a black-and-white movie, bereft of the colors of life. Zusak may not have lived under Nazi domination, but The Book Thief deserves a place on the same shelf with The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel's Night. It seems poised to become a classic.

San Francisco Chronicle - Reyhan Harmanci Writing fiction about the Holocaust is a risky endeavor. Most children learn about it in history class, or through nonfiction narratives like Eli Wiesel's Night. Zusak has done a useful thing by hanging the story on the experience of a German civilian, not a camp survivor, and humanizing the choices that ordinary people had to make in the face of the Führer.

Washington Post - Elizabeth Chang [A]n absorbing and searing narrative.

The Daily Telegraph - Lisa Hilton The suggestion that 40 million people died because of the power of words might seem trite until one recalls the mendacious blabberings of the leaders of a war we are still fighting. The Book Thief depends too much on unnecessary devices to be a great novel, but it is certainly extraordinary, resonant and relevant, beautiful and angry.

The Independent - Marianne Brace This is a moving work which will make many eyes brim. Zusak shows us how small defiances and unexpectedly courageous acts remind us of our humanity. It isn't only Death who is touched. Liesel steals our hearts too.

Booklist - Hazel Rochman More than the overt message about the power of words, it's Liesl's confrontation with horrifying cruelty and her discovery of kindness in unexpected places that tell the heartbreaking truth.

Publisher's Weekly Starred book. This hefty volume is an achievement - a challenging book in both length and subject.

Kirkus Reviews The writing is elegant, philosophical and moving. Even at its length, it's a work to read slowly and savor. Beautiful and important.

The Horn Book Starred. Exquisitely written and memorably populated... A tour de force to be not just read but inhabited.

The Age (Australia) - Peter Pierce A prize-winning children's author, Zusak has made a daring debut as an author of adult fiction .... The Book Thief is a triumph of control, and for the most part of tact, although Death is at liberty to breach any decorum. Its oblique angle on the German homefront never exalts the courage of the young, but quietly tells of how days and months are managed.

Reader Reviews

netty
The Book Thief
This book is so superbly written that I felt I knew each and every character. The only downside is that it had to end! I miss reading this book.

Rita Sessitsch
The Bookthief
Outstanding! It touches the soul. Congrats to the author. I wonder what makes a young man write a book like this. I was very surprised when I learned Mr Zusak's age.

Cloggie Downunder
very moving
The Book Thief is the fifth novel by Australian author, Markus Zusak. The setting is Nazi Germany just before the start of World War Two, through to 1943, and the story is narrated by Death. Death was decidedly overworked during the war, but he ...   Read More

Dorothy T.
Very different style--keep an open mind
I cannot remember where I first heard about this book, but when I checked it out at the bookstore, I could not get past the first couple of pages. When I saw the trailer for the upcoming movie, which intrigued me, I decided to give it another chance...   Read More

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