In His Own Words: A Conversation With Markus Zusak

Characteristics and thematic significance – Liesel is a young girl who loves to read books no matter their subject. This throughout the book influences many people including: Max, Hans, Ilsa and Rudy.

2.What is author’s purpose for writing the book? Write a paragraph summarizing the main argument or purpose.

Max describes Liesel’s use of books as a refuge in the story he leaves for her, “The Word Shaker.” In Max’s book, words are transformed into seeds, which Hitler uses to create a forest that fills people with Nazi ideology. However, Liesel grows her own tree and takes shelter in it, no one can chop it down but Max is able to climb it and take shelter with her. The story dramatises the way Liesel has used words and books to create a refuge in the midst of Nazi Germany and how she shared her refuge with Max. Also, Liesel begins using book to comfort people in the shelter by reading to them. The last lines of Liesel’s own book are “I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.” This shows Liesel’s drastic development from the girl who was unable to read in front of her class, to the person who uses books to comfort her neighbours. However, books can’t protect Liesel from everything. When Liesel sees Max on his way to the concentration camp, she rips the pages out of a book in Frau Hermann’s library in rage. It is this moment that Liesel makes a connection in her mind between words and the current state of the world. Although, at the end of the novel, a book indirectly saves Liesel’s life as she was in the basement working on her own novel when the bombs fell on Himmel Street. This is the book that Death finds, and that gives Liesel her

Many authors have written novels about to the Holocaust. Markus Zusak is no exception. However, his novel The Book Thief gives a different perspective on World War II. Rather than telling the story of a survivor or a victim, he tells the story from a German citizens point of view. Zusak tells the German point of view from the point of view of Death. In his Holocaust novel The Book Thief, Markus Zusak uses descriptive language to instill urgency and images in the reader’s head.

11 million people died during the Holocaust. In Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, Liesel Meminger loses many of her loved ones. At the beginning of the book, Liesel’s brother dies of illness on a train, and her mother is taken away by the Nazis for being a communist. After losing everyone she ever cared about, the story drags Liesel into a humble household where she discovers her passion for books, and her love for her family and friends. However, her loved ones are once again torn away from her as Himmel Street, the street she lives on, gets bombed. She loses her foster parents, her best friend, and everyone else she came to know. As a result of these adverse events, Liesel’s innocence was stolen from her. In The Book Thief, loss plays an essential role in developing characters, especially Liesel. After losing Werner, her brother, Liesel is plagued by

Zusak states how others survivors of war are being seen as grief and guilt. Max has hidden to save his own life. “The price was guilt and shame” as his family did not have the same chance by his guilt and finding escape from Nazi persecution. He is putting the Hubermans at risk which was why he os felt by guilt. During the first world was IIsa Hermann is fortunate that Liesel comes into her life to help her live again. In the novel Zusak says, "If only he'd turned for one last look at his family as he left the apartment. Perhaps then the guilt would not have been so heavy. No final goodbye" He believes that he is deserting his family. His guilt overtakes him, and desertion makes him feel guilty and that he is worth nothing.

Zusak. Zusak’s novel is about a young girl, named Liesel Meminger, who after losing her

“I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn 't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race-that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.” (Zusak 550) Markus Zusak wrote “The Book Thief” which is a historical fiction novel about a young girl named Liesel Meminger growing up in Germany during World War II. Zusak has German-Austrian parents who were children during World War II. His perspective helps us to be more empathetic towards Germans in the book because he explains to us: German children didn’t understand what Hitler was doing, not all Germans hated Jews, and Germans cared about each other deeply and helped each other out.

Life during the 1940’s was hard for the entire world. As Germany caused suffering and loss in multiple other countries, the people of Germany suffered as well. The Book Thief follows the story of a German girl named Liesel, who was forced to be taken away from her family at a young age. She then becomes the foster daughter of Rosa and Hans Hubermann, whose children have grown up and left. Liesel struggles to understand why her mother had left her, and why Hitler was causing all of the bad things in her life to happen. In The Book Thief, Markus Zusak uses the theme of loss to show how it can bring people closer together.

    Markus Zusak develops his captivating characters in a way that anyone can relate to. Liesel, the main character, has gone through much trauma in her early life. She was given up by her mother and lost her brother to starvation. She becomes terrified of death, as her brother’s demise haunts her. This leads Liesel to stealing books and secretly learning to read to escape her fears. Eventually, Liesel accepts her brother’s death and realizes there might be worse things than dying. Max Vandenburg is a Jew that came to Liesel’s family to be protected. Despite his troubles, Max is not afraid of death, he resents it. He once tells Liesel, “When Death captures me, he will feel my fist in his face.”  This shows how determined Max is to survive, even in his terrible situation. By the end of this story, I felt as if the characters were

Besides all of his success in writing, all of Zusak's books are based on his life experiences and his struggle to find out his “self”. Each of his main characters are represented through him personally, his struggle, and how he had dealt with it. Showing his own personal struggles as an adolescent, each of Zusak’s books have a main character represent how he has dealt with the issue of finding himself.

Printz Honor Book Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature. Zusak grew up in Sydney, Australia where his immigrant parents would recount their lives in Germany and Austria during World War II. Neither of Markus’s parents could read or write in English, but they encourage Markus and his siblings to do so from a very young age. At the age of 16, Zusak began to write fiction stories in his free time, which lead to him pursing a degree in teaching at the University of Sydney. Zusak is praised for his accurate and raw deception of life in Germany during World War II and I wholeheartedly agree.

With the use of metaphors Zusak gives historical background to the struggles and hardships of World War I. Taking place in the German camps during the war, death was inevitable. Only one soldier of that regiment was able to go back

Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief takes place during some key events of World War II, in Germany. The author tells of an orphan in Nazi Germany, named Liesel Meminger. She is adopted by Rosa Hubermann and Hans Hubermann, who are her foster parents. Liesel is known as the book thief because she steals various books. When she was enrolled in school, she felt powerless because she did not understand or how to read books. Though, her father starts teaching her how to read. With the words she is learning, it is giving her the power to influence and control people with her words. She shares her passion for books with a Jew evading from the Nazis, Max Vandenberg. The portrayal of life in Nazi Germany in The Book Thief is accurate, specifically regarding the events, the loyalty for Hitler, and the treatment of Jews.

influence on him. He became quite a prolific writer, and he wrote more than 100