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Main page » Fiction literature » The Book Thief - Markus Zusak [unabridged]


The Book Thief - Markus Zusak [unabridged]

 
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The Book Thief is a best-selling novel by Markus Zusak published in 2005. It was a 2007 Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book. As of September 2009 it has been on the New York Times Children's Best Seller list for 105 weeks. Although American publisher Knopf has marketed the 550 page book set in Nazi Germany as a young-adult novel, it was originally intended and published in Zusak's native Australia specifically for adults. (Wikipedia).

 

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. Liesel Meminger and her younger brother are being taken by their mother to live with a foster family outside Munich. Liesel's father was taken away on the breath of a single, unfamiliar word - Kommunist - and Liesel sees the fear of a similar fate in her mother's eyes. On the journey, Death visits the young boy, and notices Liesel. It will be the first of many near encounters. By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordion-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found. But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jewish fist-fighter in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down. THE BOOK THIEF is a story about the power of words to make worlds. In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

read by Allan Corduner


I recommend this book for grade readers. It takes some pages until you get into it but afterwards you will not be able to put this book down.




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Tags: Zusak, published, Markus, Thief, novel