The Book Thief
March 31, 2008
When I read that the author’s father swore at him for making him cry when he read this book I did not feel quite so bad about my own reaction to it. The unusual narrator had me guessing at the very beginning (I picked this volume up on the way through the airport without having heard anything about it) but very quickly the narrator, “haunted by humans”, makes a lot of sense. The book thief is a young girl living in Nazi Germany. In poverty stricken circumstances and in society’s moral vacuum but in which her foster parents provide a compass. So too the books she steals along the way - which save her. Literally and spiritually. And maybe a bit of me in the reading too.
This is of my favourite books. The author is only in his early 30’s. Such talent!