What if Death was the narrator of the story? What if he told you the story of a young girl from his perspective avoiding him time after time amid Nazi Germany? That is the premise of the novel The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. The book is a historical fiction novel published in 2005 that won several awards not long after its publishing. It also has a movie that was released in 2013. The story follows Liesel Meminger, a nine-year-old girl who is sent to live with foster parents in Molching, Germany after her mother gives her up. Molching is a small town near Munich. Before she arrives, her brother dies and she steals a book off the ground from a gravedigger called The Gravedigger’s Handbook. She learns to read from her foster father, Hans Hubermann. She makes a best friend, Rudy Steiner, who is notorious for his big mouth and goofy character. He becomes her partner in crime, specifically, stealing books. They steal several books throughout the years from Nazi book burnings to the mayor’s house to many other forbidden places. Throughout her new childhood, she witnessed the growing of Nazi control and its persecution of Jews. She was forced to participate in Nazi girl scout activities. Secretly though, the Hubermanns are against the Nazi party and end up hiding a young Jewish man named Max Vandenburg in their basement. Liesel becomes good friends with him and together they share old stories and their dreams. As the Nazis become suspicious of everyone and demand their full dedication to the party, life becomes increasingly more dangerous for Liesel, Max, and the Hubermanns. Through all the horror and tragedy happening around her, she persists in living life to the fullest and even writes her own story, a book, called The Book Thief.
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