Description
“The Book Thiefis unsettling and unsentimental, yet ultimately poetic. Its grimness and tragedy run through the reader’s mind like a black-and-white movie, bereft of the colors of life. Zusak may not have lived under Nazi domination, but The Book Thief deserves a place on the same shelf with The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel’s Night. It seems poised to become a classic.”
– USA Today
“Zusak doesn’t sugarcoat anything, but he makes his ostensibly gloomy subject bearable the same way Kurt Vonnegut did in Slaughterhouse-Five: with grim, darkly consoling humor.”
– Time Magazine
“Elegant, philosophical and moving…Beautiful and important.”
– Kirkus Reviews, Starred
“This hefty volume is an achievement…a challenging book in both length
and subject…”
– Publisher’s Weekly, Starred
“One of the most highly anticipated young-adult books in years.”
– The Wall Street Journal
“Exquisitely written and memorably populated, Zusak’s poignant tribute to words, survival, and their curiously inevitable entwinement is a tour de force to be not just read but inhabited.”
– The Horn Book Magazine, Starred
“An extraordinary narrative.”
– School Library Journal, Starred
“The Book Thief will be appreciated for Mr. Zusak’s audacity, also on display in his earlier I Am the Messenger. It will be widely read and admired because it tells a story in which books become treasures. And because there’s no arguing with a sentiment like that.”
– New York Times