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Markus Zusak's novels include Fighting Ruben Wolfe, Getting The Girl , I Am The Messenger, The Book Thief and Bridge of Clay. He received the Children's Book Council of Australia's Book of the Year Award for I Am the Messenger. He lives in Sydney, Australia, with his wife and children.
Markus Zusak's website
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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 ...
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