Markus Zusak: The Book Thief

So far, this has been one of the best books of 2012 for me (2012 as in the year I read it, this novel was published in 2006). It's more than 550 pages that go by in a couple of days - keeping you up at night because you just have to finish the story - and that also stay with you for a long time after you've reluctantly turned the last page. The Book Thief takes place in Nazi Germany, and is centered around a young girl, Liesel Meminger, who ends up in a foster home, after tragically losing her brother on the way to Molching, where their mother is forced to take her children, after her husband has been taken away because he is a "Kommunist". As World War II draws near and finally climaxes, we follow Liesel's growing relationship with her foster parents, Anna and Hans Hubermann, and the other Himmel Street neighbors. Hans is the most likeable and deeply moving character of the book. He works as a painter and plays an accordion whose story we come to know later in the novel, as his past is revealed to us. Anna's coarseness doesn't come near Hans's tenderness to the little girl, who won't even speak when she first arrives, but her affection towards her is equally strong. Another important character is Rudy Steiner, Liesel's friend at school, whose love for her is truly heroic. And finally Max Vandenburg - a Jew who the Hubermanns hide in their basement during the war - is a crucial figure, because the simplicity and tenderness of his relationship with Liesel make the backdrop of the holocaust all the more horrific. The story is well plotted, all the characters are intense and well-rounded, but the main strong points of the novel are the writing style and the narrative structure. The whole story is told by Death, an omniscient narrator, who stresses how busy its job is between 1939 and 1945. The Death we meet in these pages is quite different from the traditional image, since here it appears not menacing or cruel, but benevolent, deeply attached to the souls it carries lovingly away from the bloody earth and extremely tired of its task. This choice of narrator helps the author hold the story tightly together, as everything is orchestrated by an omniscient narrator (much like in 18th century fiction). This point of view helps human actions appear in all of their grotesqueness, when violence is concerned: ‘I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sandcastles, houses of cards, that’s where they begin. Their great skill is their capacity to escalate.’

At the same time, the peculiar device of such an abstract voice allows for the use of imagery and actual poetry that add poignancy to the story without being out of place. There are even illustrations (by Trudy White) and news-flash type, bold centered notes that anticipate what takes place in the following paragraphs, and that serve as epigrams along with the lists of "features" of each chapter. For example, this note is effective in its brevity in telling us the character's intention to help his friend: 

The contents of Rudy's bag: 

    six stale pieces of bread, 

  broken into quarters.

The beauty and power of words are also an underlying theme of the book, as the title points to. Many reviewers talk about Liesel saving books from Nazi campfires (referring to one episode in particular) and the Italian translation of the title, unfortunately, is La ragazza che salvava i libri, coherently with this interpretation. Liesel's status of thief, however, is very important to the story,  as is the fact that she is actually stealing the books. Her first motive is always to take something beautiful and important, and keep it for herself. The power and beauty of words, and of the people who use them, are the key to a haunting story about the tragedy of the holocaust and the War, that manages to be heart-warming and hopeful. The rarity of this combination is what will make The Book Thief a modern classic.