Summary of The Book Thief
Set in Nazi Germany during the Second World War, “The Book Thief” tells the story of Liesel Meminger, a young girl living with her foster parents in a town near Munich. Amidst the chaos of war – with bombs falling from the sky and the Nazi regime growing ever more brutal – Liesel finds purpose in stealing, reading, and sharing books that have been condemned by the authorities.
Reasons to read The Book Thief
Narrated by Death, the novel offers an original perspective on the horrors of war and the resilience of the human spirit, highlighting the beauty that can emerge even in the darkest of times. Though often marketed as a young adult novel, “The Book Thief” is widely read by adults as well. It became an international bestseller and was adapted into a film in 2013. Markus Zusak, an Australian author, was awarded the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis (the German youth literature prize), the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book, and the Margaret Edwards Award (an American Library Association award for young adult literature) for this novel.
Setting: Germany
Book set in Germany: Molching, a fictional town near Munich, likely based on Dachau.
Original title: The Book Thief
Year of publication: 2006
Nr of pages: 624
