The Book Thief

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Random House Speakers Bureau Listen to Markus Zusak's interview on The Book of Life podcast, hosted by Heidi Estrin. Listen to Markus Zusak's interview on NPR's "Weekend All Things Considered" Listen to a one hour-long interview with Markus Zusak on the Diane Rehm Show * Link courtesy of WAMU 88.5 FM American University Radio View a clip of Markus Zusak’s interview on ABC’s Good Morning America

Chicago has selected Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief as fall 2012 One Book, One Chicago read Click here for details.

The Book Thief has been named to the 2012 World Book Night list for WBNAmerica! Click here to learn more.

Praise for The Book Thief:

"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

"The Book Thief is 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

Praise for I Am the Messenger:

“A touching and intriguing exploration of the need to live one’s life significantly, to value the richness knowing one another brings along with its terrible vulnerability.”
–The Bulletin for the Center of Children’s Books, Starred

“Don’t start this compulsively readable book without enough time to read it straight through to the final page.”
– Publishers Weekly, Starred

“Zusak succeeds brilliantly.”
– Booklist, Starred

“Zusak’s characters, styling, and conversations are believably unpretentious, well conceived, and appropriately raw. Together, these key elements fuse into an enigmatically dark, almost film-noir atmosphere where unknowingly lost Ed Kennedy stumbles onto a mystery–or series of mysteries–that could very well make or break his life.”
– School Library Journal, Starred

“Funny, engrossing, and suspenseful.”
– KLIATT, Starred