The Book Thief: I Steal, Therefore I Am

If you expect to realise more about Nazi Germany or the Holocaust by reading a novel, “The Book Thief”, a whimsical piece far different from what Markus Zusak has created before, may be a letdown albeit that it is set in Molching, the ground zero of Nazism, during the Hitler Era. “The Book Thief” is, dare I say, more than that of seeking to elucidate the ins and outs of the Nazi’s brutality or to call for animadversion upon the Swastika. However, I must confess that I had the book untouched on my teak bookcase for several dawns and dusks after it’d been released. My scepticism towards “The Book Thief” is inevitable since I am a broad reader of diverse books concerning the Holocaust and naturally sceptical about whether the seeming cliché lying on the bookshelf would be bestowed with novelty.


But “The Book Thief” itself attests to the originality of what Zusak has campaigned to do. First, the story is narrated by Death, the Grim Reaper you have known very well as he behaves in Elie Wiesel’s “Night,” one of his trilogy in the Holocaust, colluding with war to shed innocent blood. However, it is not the case here. Zusak reverses the impression that Death used to leave in our minds. Death confides, just in one of many scenarios when he has a chance to conciliate his readers, that “to me, war is like the new boss who expects the impossible,” forcing him to carry on with expiry of human beings. The boss will never be fulfilled but only ask for more. “You see?” Death says with commiseration and sentiment after he grants the last breath to Rudy Steiner, the Heroine Liesel Meminger’s closest friend. "Even death has a heart."


Among other highlights, “The Book Thief” is Zusak’s audacious and imaginative headwork which leads the whimsy-whamsy to a tear-jerker. Liesel Meminger, traumatised nine-year-old heroine, is the one we are grieving for. All spring from "The Grave Digger's Handbook," the first book that Meminger stole. It not only guides gravediggers to grave-digging success but, most importantly, opens a gateway for the book thief (viz. Meminger) to her love affair with words which are the link to knowledge. With words, she finds she does exist. During the hours reading with her foster father, the genial accordionist Hans Hubermann, words, which she used to lack but now is acquiring, are the only consolation for the disappearance of her mother and the demise of her little brother. But she does more. By reading the Führer's “Mein Kampf,” she also shares her love with a Jewish man, Max Vandenburg hidden by the Hubermanns family. While Adolf Hitler manipulates words to propagandise power and inflict havoc, Meminger employs words to heal anguish and brace people’s heart. We are overwhelmed by words.


“The Book Thief” is winding, roundabout and verbose tale punctuated with analepsis and prolepsis. However I don’t adore it the less for the meandering writing. It will be and should be widely read for the sake of the treasure of words. By way of this, let words tell for themselves!