Book of a Lifetime: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

From The Independent archive: former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell on a bittersweet novel set against the darkness of life in Nazi Germany

Markus Zusak arrives at a screening of the film adaptation of ‘The Book Thief’ in Sydney, 2014 (Getty)

Whenever anyone asks me what my favourite book is, I find it very hard to answer. I have read so many brilliant books. It is tempting to pick a classic: Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, a Dickens, a Brontë – and I do love Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. But the one book I cannot let go of is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.

One of the most imaginative, thought-provoking pieces of writing, it will pull at your heartstrings while challenging your thoughts about the world you live in. Trying to explain the story to someone who hasn’t read it is like trying to explain colours to a blind man. However, I’ll do my best!

First, the story is narrated by Death. His tone (I presume him to be a man) is surprisingly warm and thoughtful. His descriptions of collecting souls from the dying are brilliant: “as I picked him up his soul melted in my arms like butter”. He is our link to the big man upstairs. The opening is esoteric, ambiguous and dream-like – not really representative of the book. The real story unfolds a few pages in, set in wartime Germany.

Death’s attention is caught by a little girl and her brother travelling on a train to their new foster parents. Their mother is so poor she has been forced to give them up. However, on the way the little boy dies and they are forced to disembark the train. Liesel’s mother carries the boy through the thick snow to a tiny graveyard, accompanied by Liesel. It’s a heartbreaking moment.

But this is the start of her career as the book thief, when she finds a gravedigger’s handbook which she can barely read. Liesel finds herself staying with foster parents in Himmel Street (which, ironically, means heaven). She is suffering loneliness and grief, but finds solace with the father, who comforts her when she awakes screaming with nightmares. Together they learn to read the gravedigger’s handbook.

(Handout)

The world is at war and Liesel is having her own personal one at school, trying to understand the cruelty around her. Her innocence highlights what an ugly time it was to live in Nazi Germany as she watches Jews being vilified. She realises that her real mother is not coming back, thanks to the Führer. The tension lies in the dangerous secret the family is hiding in the cellar – a Jew. Liesel befriends him and he teaches her more about words. She continues to steal more books, and each theft has poignancy to it.

But there is also humour and sweetness; in particular, Liesel’s relationship with her partner-in-crime Rudy, a blue-eyed blond boy who loves to run, and blackens himself up to be like Jessie Owens. This gets him in to a lot of trouble, but again highlights a vile era of prejudice. I cried at the end, when death described the world as “an ugly stew”. This imaginative story highlights the light and shade of humanity, the good and the evil, the hatred and the love. I agree: the world can be an ugly stew.