Welcome to a new year filled with reading. We celebrate the beginning of this new year with our Sunday Arts Section (SAS) Book Club January book choice: The Book Thief, by Australian writer Markus Zusak. The Book Thief, published in 2007, is now a major Hollywood motion picture scheduled to open in T&T on January 8.
Here is what you need to know about The Book Thief:
1. It is a strange book.
2. The author is fond of listing points–like this.
3. The narrator is death personified.
4. Death sees colours first and then people.
5. The story is set in 1939 in Nazi Germany.
6. It is another World War II story, but not like any you have read.
7. The novel is about what can't be said as much as what can be said in Nazi Germany.
8. All in all, the writing style is like snapshots tossed together for dramatic effect.
9. The books that the main character, Liesel, steals become the thread that holds the strange story together.
10. The anecdotes tossed throughout the story will likely push you to emotional extremes. Have a box of tissues ready.
I have no doubt that Zusak is telling the truth when he says he grew up hearing many of the tales that he tells in his immensely popular novel. This is because I heard many of the same stories growing up with a mother who lived in Nazi Germany when she was a child not much older than Liesel.Most World War II stories focus on Jewish people and the Holocaust. This one, at least for a time, focuses on people who are not Jewish and tells the story of those Germans who were not Nazi sympathisers.All books about the Holocaust are books about humanity or our loss of humanity, but The Book Thief takes this theme to a whole new realm, as it shows an ordinary child with unspeakable hardships who is determined to dream, feel and experience life in the midst of a war she can't comprehend. She survives through her love for books.It's the story of how important words and language are to us. It shows how communication tears us apart or binds us together.The Book Thief is more than a book. It is an experience that will change the way you look at history, communication and life.
Discussion questions:
1. In The Book Thief, Zusak says books are sometimes important to us because of the circumstances in which we get them or read them. How is this true for Liesel in the book? Is this true for everyone?
2. Why do you think that Death, the narrator, says it sees colours first and then people?
3. Are you surprised that Liesel feels so much love for her foster parents–including her foster mother, who often seems abusive? What does this show readers about Liesel and this period of time in Nazi Germany?
4. What is your initial reaction to Zusak's writing style? How does it affect you as a reader? How would a different style–a more fluid style, for instance–have changed the reader's relationship with the story?