The Book Thief (2005) - Markus Zusak - Book Review

The Book Thief (2005) - Markus Zusak

The power of words and what it can do is something we witness more in these dire moments than in any other. In fact it is the same power that sustained despots and peacemakers. Author of the book The Book Thief, Zusak is employing the same artifice here to write one of his best novels.

Set in the World War II Germany, the book tries to see how the war and propaganda worked at least for a ‘microscopic German minority’, contrary to many others who went head over heels to wipe out the Jewish race from the face of the earth. The novel is narrated by death through a bunch of nice characters like Liesel, Rudy, Max, Hans, Rosa who represent an alternative version of German men. These men held belief in humanity over racial and cultural limits.

However hard one tries to assuage the crime of Holocaust (considering the novel being one), I think it will only be like a drop in the ocean, for we know that the evil philosophy of the Nazis have caused the death of more than 6 million Jews. At times I felt that the author was trying to sweep away the brunt of Jewish pogrom by writing this novel. Yet, if you are ready to forgive Zusak for his early ambition and experimentation you will find a nice story that you can cherish your whole reading career.

The narration by ‘death’ is the main thing that sets this novel apart, but it is not without its own serious issues. Whether it is because death in itself is a spoilsport by nature that the writer is trying to spoil the fun of reading by making it narrate the story and make it announce things beforehand, or is it just an innovative method that the writer found would work for his novel is difficult to determine. (Later we find the author admitting that part of it was his experimentation) In any case, as a reader I can vouchsafe that it is not because of any of these miserable methods that readers like this novel, but only because of the sheer rawness of its plot.

If it is a method then we know that writers like Henry Fielding and Laurence Sterne have experimented with the ‘narrator interacting with the reader’ method well in the 18th century itself and therefore what we witness is nothing new.

If it has gotten something to do with the theme (that death being a leveler and therefore a spoilsport) then we must acknowledge that it is an ingenious attempt indeed. But if we allow that to be the case, then there comes the sprinkling of German words whose only effect is to create a twitch in the smoothness of reading. Another thing is the artifice of telling a general story of the Holocaust side by side the original story of Liesel and Max. This could also be said as serving no purpose other than cause the book to weigh a few pounds more. However, Max’s sketchbook (The Word Shaker) was an awesome idea and I can say that it worked.

Whatever be, if we are ready to set aside these formalist futilities, then the book is worth a reading experience.