The Book Thief

A Holocaust novel narrated by Death sounds like a creative writing prompt destined to buckle under its own cleverness. Markus Zusak pulled it off. Published in 2005, The Book Thief follows a German foster girl who steals books while Nazi Germany burns them. It became one of the biggest word-of-mouth successes in modern publishing, spending more than a decade on the New York Times bestseller list and selling millions of copies worldwide.

What it's about

Liesel Meminger arrives on Himmel Street, a poor road outside Munich, in 1939. Her brother has died on the train journey; her mother leaves her with foster parents Hans and Rosa Hubermann. At the graveside she picks up her first stolen book, a gravedigger's manual she cannot yet read. Hans, a gentle house painter with an accordion, teaches her letters in the small hours after her nightmares. Rosa, all insults on the surface, loves her fiercely underneath.

The stealing continues: from book burnings, from the mayor's library. Then Max Vandenburg, a Jewish fist fighter, arrives at the Hubermanns' door needing a hiding place in the basement. Liesel's friendship with Max, alongside her bond with the lemon-haired neighbor boy Rudy Steiner, forms the heart of the book. Above all it is a novel about words: the ones Hitler used to poison a country and the ones Liesel hoards to survive it. Death narrates the whole thing, weary and strangely tender, freely telling you in advance who will not make it to the final page.

Why everyone's talking about it

Sold as adult literary fiction in Zusak's native Australia, marketed as young adult in America, the book refused to stay in either box. It earned a Printz Honor, spawned a 2013 film adaptation, became a fixture of school curricula and later found a second life on BookTok, where its final chapters remain reliable engineering for on-camera crying. Two decades on, it still sits near the top of most-loved-book polls almost everywhere such polls are taken.

The verdict, for now

The style is the gamble. Zusak writes in fragments, bold interruptions and colors standing in for feelings; readers who love it call it poetry, while detractors find it precious, even overwrought, a fair charge in the slack middle stretch of a 550-page novel. Death's habit of announcing deaths ahead of time also drains suspense for some. Yet the gamble mostly pays off. The narration that seems like a gimmick becomes the point: someone has to witness these people, so Death does. The ending has earned its reputation. Bring tissues; everyone says so because it is true.