Synopsis/Review:
ON THEIR way to Munich in 1939 to be given up to foster parents, Liesel Meminger's six-year-old brother dies and is buried beside the train tracks. Watching, Liesel acquires her first book - The Gravedigger's Handbook.
It will be one of the 14 that give solace to her, an abandoned child, struggling to survive in war-time Germany. Her father has been taken away, branded communist; her mother vanishes. Watching Liesel, whom he christens "the book thief", is the narrator of Markus Zusak's novel of the same name.
A prize-winning children's author, Zusak has made a daring debut as an author of adult fiction.
His narrator, who courteously introduces himself, but forbears to speak his name, is Death. His task is "handling souls to the conveyor belt of eternity" and soon he will be very busy.
It is Death who tells of Liesel's ordeal, "just a small story really", and of her resilience, of the moments when she almost comes within his reach.
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