Youngsters thronged the auditorium that was about to host The Book Thief, a session between its author Markus Zusak and Tishani Doshi. The book, set in Nazi Germany in 1939, is about Liesel, a nine-year old who has to live with her foster parents in Munich. It was also adapted into a hauntingly beautiful film.
Doshi started the session with a brief summary: “The story is also about her relationship with the boy next door, the mayor’s wife who allows her into the secret library and turns the other way when she steals books, and Max, a Jew who her father hides in their basement. It is a story told by death, but it is also about surviving.”
Why did Zusak choose death as a narrator? “They say war and death are best friends. So, who better to be hanging around with during war time in Nazi Germany? At first, Death sounded too sadistic; it looked like he was enjoying his work too much,” says Zusak. He decided to scrap the version with Death as the narrator. “I had Liesel to tell the story. Now, the problem was that even though my mom was from Germany and dad from Austria, I grew up in Australia. And, my young German protagonist sounded most Australian!” He chose a third-person narration, and was back to Death again.
But, this time, Death’s characterisation was different. “I thought: ‘What if Death was afraid of us? And, he felt sorry for humans. And, what if he was writing this story to prove to himself that humans can be beautiful, worthwhile and selfless.’ I went right back to the beginning and rewrote.”
The stories Zusak heard as a child from his mother and father helped him write the book better. However, the word Holocaust did not even cross his mind. “If I had felt the burden of it, I would not have been able to write. I did not write the book to save any one. I just knew that I had a story to tell.”
Doshi requested Zusak to read an excerpt from the book. “What really happens when a book is out is that there is a version of you reading it and they send an audio of an actor reading it, and he/she does a better job,” he said. Zusak then read the first page from the book in both voices. The young author clearly got his assumptions wrong, because the applause for his version was the loudest.
